


The Shaman Killer

by AlpinGeist



Series: The Shaman Killer [1]
Category: Fartherall, JourneyQuest
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 23
Words: 44,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlpinGeist/pseuds/AlpinGeist
Summary: As a small orc warparty returns from a failed quest, they encounter a strange human with no tongue.





	1. The Djulid

**Author's Note:**

> The Shaman Killer is copyright ©2018 Alpin R Geist and is released under the terms of Fartherall Shared Cinematic Universe License and Agreement:
> 
> Attribution: This work is based on Fartherall, copyright ©2018 Matt Vancil, and reuses content from The Gamers: The Shadow Menace, copyright @2018 Dead Gentlemen Productions.
> 
> Share-alike: You are free to use, remix, and transform this work in the creation of your original Fartherall stories and projects, subject to the Fartherall Shared Cinematic Universe License & Agreement
> 
> Learn more at http://scu.la/Fartherall.

**Chapter 1: The Djulid**

Ikram sniffed the late autumn air. The surrounding brush of the mid-Afterlands rustled little, but the familiar scent lingered amongst the petrichor: human.  
  
Only one.  
  
His eyes narrowed. Why would a lone human follow an orcish warparty through disputed territory? It didn’t smell scared, or angry, or hurt.  
  
Kren noticed too, a halo of auburn red framing his face. Still short, his hair had grown in the months since his father had sliced off his three-foot mane. “It followed us,” Kren muttered. “Your quarry. Must’ve lived.”  
  
Lived? Yesterday, they’d left the little human bleeding from its ribcage, near dead. While its companions fought, that human found Ikram, faced him, stared at him with its round, brown eyes. Trusting. It had no weapons, like a wizard might. Its hand reached toward him, and Ikram’s reflex sunk a knife into its torso. But the human’s fingers had no glow, no buzz, no whiff of magic. An un-threat, like a cow. A baby cow. Ikram hadn’t let their shaman slit its throat or take its ears, as it bled silently into the earth.  
  
And now, it followed them.  
  
Their shaman may not have noticed yet, with the incenses that clouded his nostrils, but the others watched them warily. As the Leader’s second, Kren would give the command, until Leader Djakka woke. If he ever woke again.  
  
Still unconscious, Djakka wheezed on the gurney of sticks, his stomach splayed open after their skirmish yesterday. His air was thick with fever. They’d carry him, until he could walk, or until he died. _Gods help them if Djakka died. They’d never be whole again._  
  
Ikram breathed deep. No musty iron fog, unlike during the skirmish. “I don’t smell its blood.”  
  
Blixtek brandished her curved blade, teeth bared. Her ropes of hair hung down, brushing the spikes on her shoulder armor. Ikram didn’t know how she always overheard him and Kren, but she’d been listening in since before Ikram could pull a bow. “Want I should kill it?” she said.  
  
“No,” Ikram said, too fast. Too obvious. He’d let the pale little creature live, if barely. Kren knew. “It doesn’t smell wounded anymore. It could be a djulid. I will ask.” If it was a healer, it might be able to help Djakka.  
  
“Ask? You’ll try to mewl Westish?” Kren asked.  
  
“Maybe it studied Orcish at its djulid academy.” Blixtek mimed a human priest’s lecture. “Today, we waste valuable time learning the language of our enemies.”  
  
Ikram shrugged. “Maybe. Blixtek, you restrain the shaman.”  
  
Kren said, “I’ll handle the boys.”  
  
Ikram stepped back from the party as Blixtek moved near Shaman Hatk. Terribly useless shaman, Hatk. Used yesterday’s healing on himself. Today’s healing could not help, and he could not even craft a poultice to prevent Djakka from contracting fever. If Djakka died, they might as well stop their late travel home and burrow into fresh graves instead. The Radzad, Chieftess Gax, had told Ikram as much before they left. _Come home with my son, or don’t come home._  
  
Some paces into the brush, the human hid behind a tree, its large eyes peering forward. It smiled as Ikram approached. Teeth too close. Lips too pink. No noise. It hadn’t uttered a sound as Ikram’s knife had sunk into its side yesterday either.  
  
Ikram displayed his bare hands. “Hello, Humie.” It let him get close, an arm’s length away, closer than any person should let an enemy. Ikram prodded the human’s wound, lifting the tunic upward to display its ribs. The human wriggled.  
  
Ticklish? How weak.  
  
Ikram prodded the human’s healed wound—not even a scar to prove it battled—and furrowed his brows. A mortal wound, now nothing? This was a djulid, for sure. He grabbed the human by its wrist and led it forward.  
  
It pulled back as they left the brush, but Ikram outweighed it by far more than half. The djulid watched Blixtek and Shaman Hatk anxiously.  
  
The shaman whirled, finally aware, his eyes flung open wide in battle ire. Blixtek grasped both his biceps from behind and pinned Shaman Hatk in place so that Ikram and the human could approach Djakka’s gurney.  
  
The human absently tapped its icon, a pale-yellow stone hung around its neck, with the tips of its fingers.  
  
“Heal him,” Ikram commanded. The human looked up. Why in the hell did every look from its brown eyes throw a dagger through his? They were the color of dirt. Mud. Excrement. Why, why, why?  
  
He should kill it just to stop that happening. He jerked the human’s arm and asked with his eyes. _Fix him. Fix my friend._ Orcs didn’t beg, not easily. But to save Djakka, Ikram might. “Heal him,” he said. And Ikram let go of the human’s wrist.  
  
The human prodded at Djakka, who shivered anew. The human’s fingers found Djakka’s gut wound, a slash through his liver. Black blood seeped forward from graying puffy skin. Djakka moaned weakly.  
  
The shaman lurched forward, but Blixtek held tight, muttering seductive little curses in his ear. As was her way.  
  
The human leaned down to smell the wound, and after, Djakka’s breath. Its nose nearly touched the prone leader’s. Ikram’s heart skipped. _It’s not a threat. It’s a djulid._  
  
The human’s brown eyes bulged, and its bottom lip sucked into its mouth. Its hands dove through its pack, dumping the contents on the ground—jars of paste and wraps of leaves and barks. The human combined them with fury, in a small mortar. The pestle worked tirelessly, while the human considered the other jars. It stopped the pestle, and moved the jars around, turning some over, then snaked out one long leaf from a bundle. It coated the leaf in the paste, and popped open a large skein of—  
  
“Liquor!” Kren said. Alcohol scalded their nostrils.  
  
“A drunk healer,” Blixtek said. “Nice find, Ikram.”  
  
“I’ll flay it. I’ll eat its skin,” Shaman Hatk said.  
  
“Please,” Blixtek murmured into his ear, “we’ve seen your pathetic appetite.”  
  
“Then I’ll smoke the rest into jerky.”  
  
Kren turned. “Quiet.”  
  
“Who died and made you Leader?” Hatk snapped.  
  
“Djakka, unless this pink thing can save him,” Kren said. “Set the gurney down.” The two carriers lowered the stretcher. These two were younger, newer warriors, twins in Djakka’s year, but they didn’t have his sharpness. Or his mass. Or his mother.  
  
The human stared up at Ikram with worried eyes. Big, brown, worried eyes. Ikram knelt and put his hands forward like he might with a child. “Shh, shh. Go on.”  
  
The human poured the clear liquor over Djakka’s middle, flushing the black blood until it ran nearly clear, tinged with red. Djakka’s muscles shifted, in pain, but the human put a hand on his shoulder and pushed down so he wouldn’t writhe. Alcohol stench stung Ikram’s nose, harsh. The human covered the leaf in paste that smelled like spices and oil and clean magic. Tense fingers attached the bandage to the surrounding skin, the leaf’s dark green off-color with Djakka’s new ashen hue. The human pressed its icon to its forehead, and the yellow stone glowed. The human’s mouth formed soundless words as it ran its sun-freckled hands over Djakka’s middle.  
  
Bright light entered the wound through the leaf.  
  
Djakka’s face gained color, enough to make his rank scars stop blending with the rest of his face.  
  
“Did it work?” one of the twins asked. “Can we go home?”  
  
The human was still working, its thin fingers shaking potions and listening to the rattle. It chose one, unscrewed the top, and sniffed. Mint and a tinny bark and elderberry. It closed the top and chose another, ginger and mint and cinnamon. It scooted closer to the gurney and lifted Djakka’s head.  
  
“What are you doing?” Ikram asked.  
  
“It’s going to poison him!” Shaman Hatk shouted.  
  
Even Blixtek looked worried, her cheeks sucked in, her knife-hand tensed. “Kren?”  
  
Kren tried pulling backward on the human’s shoulder.  
  
It hissed, like a beast. A wildcat, a marsupial, a snake. Kren frowned.  
  
“Kill it!” the shaman demanded. His arms worked free from Blixtek’s grasp and started to form the signs to cast fire. Magic wove around his fingers, summoned from the Garden Realm.  
  
“You’ll hurt Djakka!” Kren shouted.  
  
Ikram’s knife flashed before he knew he’d decided. The curved blade slid through the shaman’s fingers, severing three at their knuckles. The fireball fizzled.  
  
Ikram turned back to Djakka, whose eyes slowly opened.  
  
The human stared back, the first thing the waking orc saw.  
  
Djakka panicked, his green irises surrounded by white sclera. His shoulders tensed, and his mouth widened to yell. “A—”  
  
The human tossed in the cinnamon potion and covered Djakka’s mouth with its hand. Its leg pinned Djakka down and braced against the gurney sticks. Djakka’s hands flung upward, trying to hit the human. Three blows hit as it ducked forward over Djakka’s head. It winced, eyes shut, but it didn’t let go.  
  
Ikram turned to grab his friend’s flailing, muscular arms. “No, Djakka. It’s helping us.” Djakka’s green skin was feverish. Too warm. He wouldn’t make the trip. The human clamped down, its hand and body pressing to keep the potion in Djakka’s mouth.  
  
Shaman Hatk still wailed at his lost fingers. Blixtek took him into a choke-hold. “Be a good boy, Hattie. Maybe the humie will fix you next.”  
  
Under Ikram’s fingers, a shudder rippled across Djakka’s prone body, followed by a sudden cool. The human lifted its head and shuffled backward to its bag. It gathered its jars and re-situated them in its pack, rubbing its head where Djakka hit.  
  
“A humie?” Djakka asked. “What’s a humie here for? Ikky, didn’t you kill that one?”  
  
Ikram blushed at the nickname.  
  
“It followed us,” Kren said. “Good too. You would’ve died.”  
  
The human edged behind Ikram. Djakka’s nose crunched, eyebrows raised. “You can’t keep it,” he said.  
  
“I’m not going to—”  
  
“You remember the bunny?” Djakka interrupted.  
  
“I remember the bunny,” Kren said.  
  
“You hid it like a pet, but Ma found it and made you kill it.”  
  
“And eat it,” Kren added.  
  
“Delicious. Seared to perfection,” Blixtek added. She kissed the air and had to tighten her grip on the struggling shaman.  
  
“It’s not a bunny,” Ikram said.  
  
“It’s a thief!” the shaman wailed. Ikram turned to find the human plucking Hatk’s fingers from the foliage. It brushed them off, examining them. Its big brown eyes glanced up, bright, at Ikram, and it smiled.  
  
Ikram reached forward to take the fingers. “No. You can’t have those. They aren’t yours.”  
  
The human snatched away. Ikram grabbed its wrist and took the bloody severed fingers by force, knocking the human on its back. It scrambled. Leaves scattered. Leather-covered feet slipped in the undergrowth. Its mouth opened like it wanted to say something, but it couldn’t.  
  
Its tongue was missing.  
  
Ikram leaned forward and grabbed the little human’s chin. He pried open the pink thing’s mouth and inspected the cavern of teeth, the scarred stub where a tongue should be.  
  
“What are you doing?” Djakka asked.  
  
Ikram let go. “Nothing.”  
  
“If you’re going to rut with it at least warn us,” Blixtek said. “I’d rather not need my eyes removed.”  
  
“My fingers!” the shaman cried. “I’ll kill it. Bring it over here.”  
  
“Nobody’s going to kill it,” Ikram said.  
  
“It’ll just keep following us,” Kren said.  
  
“I’ll strangle it with my good hand,” the shaman said.  
  
“Do you want to lose the rest of your fingers?” Ikram growled. The human stood, grabbed its pack, and slid behind Ikram again. It used him like a shield.  
  
“Why does it keep hiding behind Ikky?” Djakka asked. He stood, squatting and testing his limbs. He bent at the middle. From the pained expression, the liver wound still pinched.  
  
“It likes him,” Kren said. “Maybe it’s a human thing, to fall for the one that stabs you.”  
  
Blixtek grinned. “I think I’ve heard of that.”  
  
“Why won’t you kill it?” the shaman said. “You had no issues before, gutting it.”  
  
“Because—”  
  
“Because it healed me,” Djakka said. “Healing your leader earns one extra day of life, don’t you think, Hatk?”  
  
“We’re a warparty!” Shaman Hatk spat. “We kill humans.”  
  
“You used your healspell on a scratch.”  
  
“A dagger wound.”  
  
“On your arm.” Blixtek tapped Hatk’s bicep. “Shallow too, I think.”  
  
“It would have infected. I can’t heal anyone if I’m dead.”  
  
“Of course not,” Djakka said.  
  
Hatk’s eyes raised at what sounded like forgiveness. Ikram knew better; he’d grown up with Djakka. Two years younger, the Chieftess’s son attached to Kren, Blixtek, and Ikram from their sixth summer onward.  
  
“Blex,” Djakka commanded, “kill the coward.”  
  
Blixtek drew an atrocity knife over the shaman’s throat. Blood spilled, spurted, splattered onto the foliage below.  
  
The human lurched forward, icon in hand, already glowing. _To heal Hatk?_ Ikram grabbed its shoulder and forced it back, pulling the skinny thing all the way off the ground. It kicked and bucked, its eyes locked on the dying orc shaman. Hatk clutched and reached as Blixtek let him fall to the ground. Spells flickered along the shaman’s seven remaining fingers, but never succeeded.  
  
“May this body feed the Garden,” Kren whispered a reflexive prayer.  
  
As he waited for the shaman’s writhing to stop, Djakka disinterestedly prodded at the leaf bound to his wound. After, he nodded to the two gurney-carriers. “Gather the spoils. Our tribe awaits.”  
  
Ikram didn’t ask about the human. Better for them to forget about it. Pretend it didn’t exist. What human?  
  
Djakka forgot nothing. “Kren. You said it will follow us anyway?” he asked.  
  
Kren resituated his thick ponytail. “I think it’s got a kismet.”  
  
“Kismet? With Ikky?”  
  
“Yes sir.”  
  
Djakka pointed to Ikram. “That Ikky? The one who pets bunnies?”  
  
“Delicious bunnies,” Blixtek said.  
  
Ikram tried not to blush and failed. The reddish tint colored the tips of his ears. The human’s brown eyes were still stuck on the dead shaman, and the three green fingers dropped in the foliage.  
  
“Do you think it’s an assassin?” Djakka asked.  
  
Ikram’s eyes shot open. There was no way this strange little djulid was an assassin. Far too skinny. Too meek. And those trusting eyes…  
  
Blixtek shook her head. “Can’t be. Look at its build. It’d get torn apart out here.”  
  
“By bunnies,” Kren said.  
  
“Will you guys shut up about the bunnies!” Ikram burst.  
  
Blixtek smacked her lips. Her eyes glinted with mischief.  
  
Ikram crossed his fist at her, middle finger over fore, in the rudest gesture he could come up with. She laughed.  
  
The human copied the gesture, its skinny, round-tipped fingers mangling the execution. Its thumb poked out awkwardly. Blixtek laughed harder, doubled over. Her still-bloody atrocity knife hung loosely from her fingers as her arms clutched her heaving stomach. Her thick braids swayed.  
  
Djakka pulled at the crude twine on the unmade gurney, releasing a length, and passed that to Ikram. “Leash it.”  
  
Ikram stepped back. He couldn’t. “Orcs don’t keep slaves.”  
  
“Not a slave. A prisoner.”  
  
Blixtek waved her arm. “Eh, eh, just let it go.”  
  
Kren said, “It’ll follow us.”  
  
“Won’t after I pin it to that tree.” Blixtek ran her thumb over the edge of her knife. Her eyes flicked to the human, and she smiled. An evil little smile, a hint of tusk on the right side. “May I, Leader?”  
  
Ikram put his arm out. “You said it could have a day.”  
  
“A day on a leash. Refuse, and it dies now.”  
  
“The bunnies’ll eat it,” Blixtek added.  
  
Ikram stared at the rope for half a minute, before he took the length and tied a neckhole. The human watched from behind Ikram’s arm, fascinated, until Ikram turned and tried to grab its shoulder. His fingertips brushed its tunic.  
  
Its eyes widened, from Ikram to the rope and back.  
  
It ran.  
  
A human running through the Afterlands, from orcs? Was it stupid? Its bag bumped the brush as it wriggled through, snagging sharp little branches. He could smell its sweat for a hundred yards, and he wasn’t anywhere near their best tracker.  
  
“Run, little bunny!” Blixtek said. She looked to Djakka as she cleaned her knife of Hatk’s blood. “Do I get to chase it now?”  
  
Ikram launched after the human, knives out, prepared to slice his way through wild brush. If Blixtek chased it, she’d kill it. _Whoops,_ she’d say.  
  
He found it halfway up a tree. Not too far away, but out of easy listening distance of Kren and Djakka. “Here, little humie,” Ikram called. “Come on down.”  
  
The human snapped off a small branch of the evergreen and threw the needles at him.  
  
“Hey!” Ikram covered his head with his arms as needles and cones and bark rained down. “Do you wanna die? Because Blixtek is gonna murder you.”  
  
The human blinked at him. Of course it wouldn’t suddenly understand Orcish. And he couldn’t speak but a few words of Westish, mostly threats. He didn’t want to climb up.  
  
“You’re not coming down, are you?” Ikram asked. The human blinked again. Ikram knelt, clearing the fallen leaves and needles from the surrounding area until he found dirt. Gross brown, like the little human’s eyes. “That’s probably best. You’ll do much better if you go back wherever you came from.”  
  
He picked up a branch and sketched lines in the dirt—not orcsigns, just pictures. The human peered down, leaning forward from the high-up branch.  
  
Where had it come from? There wasn’t a human settlement for fifty miles. What had this little thing been doing with those adventurers? Humans knew better, unless they were orchunters, scouting for nests. Or idiots. And this human knew its medicine, so it wasn’t simply stupid. It didn’t seem to care that Ikram’s warparty had killed its companions.  
  
No tongue. Who’d done that?  
  
He drew the human, sketched, with lines radiating from the semblance of its icon. He used his fingers to shade and smudge, until he had a likeness. “You’ll die out here, you know. Blixtek or not. Djulid or not.”  
  
The human dropped from the tree and squatted to watch the sketching a few feet away. It pointed, first to Ikram, and then to the stick.  
  
Ikram grinned and drew himself too. He drew his knives, his armor. His hair, trimmed short around his ears and tied up top. His wide nose, his middling tusks, and the three scars on his cheeks from pissing off his sisters, his mother, and Djakka respectively. The human watched, enthralled.  
  
Ikram shaded himself, his drawing standing next to the human’s. Taller by a head. Bigger by twice. The human crept closer.  
  
Ikram raised his brow. “You’ll really just follow us, won’t you?”  
  
Its cow eyes quizzed him. It still didn’t understand.  
  
“What’s taking so long?” Kren called.  
  
“Nothing.” Ikram shoveled leaves over the drawings and grabbed the little human’s tunic. It didn’t struggle much this time, as Ikram looped the leash around its neck. It just huffed.  
  
Ikram and the leashed human started back toward the others. The human dragged its feet, leaving tracks in its wake. Unacceptable. After a quarter mile, Ikram picked up the human and carried it on his shoulders.  
  
Its body warmed his neck in the near-winter air, and though Ikram wouldn’t admit this ever ever ever, he liked it. 

 

#


	2. Riverside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A late-fall skirmish in disputed territory almost wipes out the party.

Over the next day, the human tugged at the rope so much that a red line appeared around its neck, itching and irritated. It refused to stay still for long. Squirmy thing. It tapped Ikram’s shoulder incessantly, asking to be set down yet again. It couldn’t have to relieve itself again, right? It just wanted to walk.  
  
“No,” Ikram said. “Wait for a bit.” He was already lagging behind. Kren and Djakka were still in sight, but Blixtek scouted far ahead, with the twins somewhere between.  
  
The human tapped harder. It still didn’t understand orcish.  
  
“Not yet.” Ikram huffed. “What are you, a Naiad?”  
  
An undulating warcry echoed. Blixtek. Two undulations—another orcish warparty. The twins echoed her in tandem, voices mixed and undulations urgent. _There are too many,_ they said. _We need more help._  
  
Kren and Djakka were already running.  
  
Ikram flung the human off his shoulders and drew his knives. They were crossing tumultuous territories, forests and plains that changed tribes from year to year. How many were the enemy? How deadly? Did Djakka get healed just to die in the next encounter?  
  
What was Djakka searching for, to bring a warparty this far from home?  
  
They’d set out with twelve and were returning with only six. Even the smallest warparty would outmatch them.  
  
A scream sounded—one of the twins—as Ikram ran. Something tugged on his belt. The human was still tied there, yanked along by the neck during Ikram’s mad dash. It would slow him down.  
  
Ikram sliced through the thick twine leash and ran on.  
  
The smell of singed flesh and magic hit his nose as he approached the skirmish. A tree smoked, skewered with lightning. Ikram counted nine opponents, and two were shamans. A better party.  
  
_Not Black Spears,_ he prayed.  
  
Magic drew his eye. He threw his right knife, end over end, toward the casting shaman. The blade lodged in the shaman’s dominant arm’s bicep, the jagged wound spilling blood onto the ground.  
  
The shaman glared at him with angry eyes, switched his focus, and restarted the spell anew.  
  
_Shit._  
  
Ikram changed hands and threw the second knife at the shaman’s face. The curved tip crashed across the shaman’s nose and cheek, eliciting a loud cry. Ikram broke the cords on another pair of knives, his last set before he’d have to turn to archery. Drawing his bow would waste precious seconds.  
  
Kren and Djakka faced three warriors, back to back. A good pair, but outnumbered. Ikram couldn’t make out Blixtek and the younger boys. Burned flesh stank as thin smoke clogged his senses. They could use a shaman.  
  
Too bad they’d killed Hatk.  
  
The wounded enemy shaman tried to heal, white light stitching its face and the slice in its arm—with Riverside tattoos. _Not Black Spears, thank the Garden._  
  
Riverside. A massive clan, a thousand orcs at least, far too big for just one warparty.  
  
What was the Riverside chant? He’d heard it earlier in the year. _If ever we be beat, we’re hard to kill…_  
  
One of the twin warriors shrieked, then silenced with a burble.  
  
Ikram started a chant— “IF EVER WE BE BEAT, WE’RE HARD TO KILL AND TOUGH TO EAT.”  
  
The Riverside orcs paused for a split second, confused. They wondered, as Ikram hoped, whether they were fighting their own.  
  
Blixtek slit the throats of the two nearest her, with one of her arms burned black. Her eyes broiled red with battle fury, as she attacked the enemy on Djakka’s flank.  
  
Kren and Djakka turned their tide and moved to help the surviving twin. The second shaman called forth lightning in a small cloud, aimed at Kren, and Ikram sprinted for the shaman’s hands. Take off fingers, just like with Shaman Hatk.  
  
A twang sounded, and an arrow sailed just over Ikram’s hair. One stride away, lightning fired from the shaman, leaving electric cracks in the air. Ikram whirled and spotted the bowman—a tenth Riversider— in a pink-and-green wrestling match.  
  
The human clung to the bowman’s neck, choking him with skinny freckled limbs and twine.  
  
Ikram turned, not thinking, and tore his second-to-last knife through the shaman’s outstretched wrist. The blade caught on his bones.  
  
The shaman snapped up his other hand and lights stunned Ikram. Fairies danced around his eyes as he shoved away. Shaman tricks, quick-spells. Ikram jammed his hands over his eyes, rubbing, trying to get rid of the magic lights. He needed his sight back before the shamans had time to conjure something worse, fire or lightning.  
  
Ikram backed up, tripping on shrubs, until he shouldered something tall and solid. He whipped around to attack and bruised his forearm on solid wood. Just a tree. He stabilized himself on the grooved bark, the sparkles churning up nausea as they fluttered.  
  
He drew his bow by feel as he blinked. Shaky hands loaded an arrow, and Ikram waited for the shaman’s lights to give him a clear shot. Who’s who? They were all dark blurs. Not even green.  
  
A rainbow of swirls appeared, and once Ikram figured out the magic wasn't more fairy lights, he shot at the dark shape near it.  
  
His arrow pierced the shaman’s chest, a lucky hit. The swirls faded as the shaman dropped to his knees and planted his dead face into the dirt. Ikram loaded another arrow and fired into the second shaman. Through his neck. Not where he’d been aiming, but that would do. He pulled his third arrow and found the tenth Riversider still wrestling with the human.  
  
Its arms and legs were still wrapped around the enemy Riversider. The bowman stabbed the human repeatedly with the head of an arrow. The human’s blood reeked distinctly in the plethora of scents, but its skinny limbs held tight on the bowman’s throat. Its twine rope dug into green skin.  
  
No clear shot. They were too entangled, moving too much, as the enemy orc bashed the human against the ground.  
  
Djakka cried out, and Ikram swung his bow around. Swords and hand-axes matched each other, clashing, ringing. The shot wasn’t clear there either. Ikram hated being a bowman. Some warriors could fire into a fray, but the guilt would eat Ikram alive if he accidentally shot Djakka or Kren.  
Maybe they were right. Maybe he was soft. Ikram dropped the bow and snatched his knives from the shaman’s corpse, before shrieking a warcry as loud as he could, like an eagle in heat. A rush of metal and arms, he barreled into the fray.

  


#  
  
Blixtek downed the last Riversider. The enemy warrior fell, and Ikram looked around for faces he didn’t recognize. He held a knife, not his, but knives cut no matter the wielder. The enemies lay dead or dying. Ikram breathed heavily, his armor soaked in Riverside blood and probably his own as well. Injuries could be hard to tell in the rush of battle.  
  
Kren kneeled, next to the twins, and closed the eyes of the first to fall. The second clutched his brother. “May your bodies feed the Garden,” Kren whispered. “And may we see your souls again.”  
  
“Faynock and Mekram were good men,” Djakka said. “We’ll tribute their families.”  
  
Ikram, Djakka, Kren, and Blixtek were alive, by some mercy. The fight was over, and Ikram needed to release his fury. Rage should not be kept for long.  
  
Djakka clapped Ikram on the back, with an affectionate nudge of his fist on his chin. “Nice work Ikky, remembering the chant.”  
  
Kren added, “And taking out their magic users. Ikram Shaman-Killer.”  
  
Warmth bloomed behind Ikram’s heaving shoulders. Djakka and Kren always knew how to make Ikram feel needed. His fury faded.  
  
“I took out Hatk,” Blixtek said.  
  
Kren shot her a look. “Best not repeat that at Homestead.” Hatk had been one of Shaman Monten’s disciples, and Kren’s father was not forgiving.  
  
Blixtek waved her Atrocity knife, flinging enemy blood. “Please, we’re going to get there and fall directly to sleep.”  
  
“Not all of us,” Kren said.  
  
“You think one of us will be a denwatcher this year?” Ikram asked. The thought terrified him, staying up all winter. Mixing drinks to force himself awake, or risk falling into slumber and leaving the hibernating clan undefended.  
  
Kren gestured past him. “I meant your vicious little bunny. If it lives.”  
  
Ikram whirled. The human lay, whimpering voicelessly, pinned under the suffocated bowman. The rope left gouges in the orc’s throat. Ikram ran through the brush, shoving off the Riverside bowman to release the bloody human. It slumped toward him, breathing hard.  
  
Ikram kneeled next to the thing, with fifty seeping wounds along its side and face and leg. The sheer number made the stinging gash on Ikram’s forearm seem minimal.  
  
“It fought well for you,” Kren said.  
  
Ikram rested its head against him, petting the strangely soft hairs: a soft, shaggy mop the color of casted dirt. A little matted, a little bloody. The human laid on his arm, its breathing steadied. _What had it been doing in the rutting Afterlands?_  
  
“It’s a djulid,” Blixtek shouted. “Tell it to stop being dramatic.”  
  
“Blex is right,” Djakka said. “It brought me back. It can probably manage itself.”  
  
Ikram picked up the yellow stone from the long leather cord and pressed it in the human’s palm. _May whatever god this calls grant you mercy._  
  
The human frowned, its face distorting downward. It pulled on the rope around its neck, rubbed raw with blisters.  
  
“You want that off,” Ikram said. He glanced back at Djakka, for permission. For leadership.  
  
“For now.” Djakka examined his nails. “Don’t get too attached, Ikky. We might still end up eating it.” A bluff. Sane orcs didn’t eat sentient creatures. Djakka would only kill it.  
  
“Let’s hope it hasn’t figured out Orcish yet,” Kren said.  
  
“We’ll throw it off by speaking in gibberish.” Djakka grinned. “Pancake. Fetch. Miniature. Twill.”  
“Gemini mountain, fabulous noodles?”  
  
“Rut y’all. I’m going to loot the Riversiders.” Blixtek sheathed her knives and went to rummage the bodies. Red still rimmed her irises. She was not yet calm.  
  
Ikram pulled the knot free and took the rope off the human. It leaned against Ikram, still seeping blood, and touched its icon to its forehead. Those mud-brown eyes closed, its mouth moved, and the icon glowed. The human ran its hand across its blistered neck, and across its stab wounds, wincing as the skin knit together again.  
  
Blixtek called, “Ikky, you want your knives back?”  
  
“Yes!” Ikram moved to set the human down.  
  
The human's cool hands slid across Ikram’s arm to the gash there. Its icon shone again, with that healing glow. The gash stung, hot from blood, and his muscle stitched back together. He felt better, better than new, as the rush of healing coursed through his blood.  
  
The human smiled and nodded, its eyebrows tipped up like a question.  
  
Ikram smiled back, awkwardly. What gestures did humans understand? Would it understand if he tapped his shoulder twice? If he wiggled his ears?  
  
He tried both, just in case, but the human was distracted. It stood and stalked without caution into the swath of Riverside bodies and burnt leaves. Directly for Blixtek. Ikram followed.  
  
She snarled as it got close, tusks bare. The human put its palms up, opened and shut its mouth, and touched its stone to its forehead.  
  
“Ikky, tell it I don’t want its magic.”  
  
Ikram said, “You do, trust me. Better than sex.”  
  
“As if you would know,” she snapped. But she let the human close to her blackened arm with its healing light.  
  
“Three healspells,” Kren noted.  
  
Blixtek moaned as the light slithered to her wounds. “Oh rut in a pigsty, that’s good. Djakka, I changed my mind about the bunny. Let’s keep it.”  
  
One of the dying Riverside orcs moaned and coughed. Blood spurted from its mouth, a blade driven into its stomach. Kren was retrieving the knife as the human bounded toward them, the stone icon already to its forehead.  
  
Ikram’s eyes widened. Was it about to try to heal the dying Riversider? He rushed forward to intercept it. Closer, Kren grabbed the human by the tunic and lifted it up, away from the dying orc.  
  
“Can it not tell the difference between us?” Djakka asked.  
  
“It can,” Kren said but didn’t elaborate. The human kicked, its stone still aglow.  
  
Ikram arrived, and pulled the atrocity knife from the Riversider’s gut, and slit the enemy’s throat, dead.  
  
The human stopped kicking, and the light faded from its stone. Its eyes caught Ikram, muddy brown and disappointed.  
  
Djakka watched the human, calculating. “If it can tell the difference between us and them, then why would it try to heal an enemy?”  
  
Kren pursed its lips and set the human down.  
  
“Does it know what an enemy is?” Blixtek said. “Maybe it thinks everyone is its friend. Humans can be real dumb.”  
  
“It killed one though,” Ikram said.  
  
“Did it?” Kren asked. “Could be it’s a possum.”  
Djakka pointed to the bowman. “Blex!”  
  
“On it.” Blixtek bounded for the strangled orc, still prone on the ground. As soon as she started toward him, the bowman sprang up and ran into the woods. Blixtek chased him, a cackle escaping her. She loved when prey ran.  
  
“We need to be wary of ambush,” Kren said. “Rumor says Riversiders might get annexed.”  
  
Annexed by Black Spears? Didn’t they have enough troops already?  
  
“Blex! Leave it. Let’s move,” Djakka commanded.  
  
Blixtek turned around and re-gripped her atrocity knife. “Damn that rutting humie. I’m back to killing and eating it.”  
  
Ikram kept his hand on the human’s shoulder to keep it in place. Why would it leave an enemy alive? Why would it try to heal an enemy? Stupid, soft thing.  
  
Kren locked eyes with Djakka. “We don’t have a shaman.”  
  
“Because you ordered—” Blixtek said.  
  
“It stays,” Djakka said. “Ikky, leash it. We need to move.”  
  
“But—” But the leash hurt its throat.  
  
“Are you questioning your commander?” Djakka asked.  
  
“No.” Ikram lowered his eyes. Blixtek passed him the rope, plucked up from where the prone bowman had lain.  
  
Kren took the rope, looping the twine around the human’s middle. “So as not to hurt its neck,” he whispered.  
  
Ikram wondered, was he so obvious?  
  
“Double pace,” Djakka said. “I want to be home by the end of the week.”  
  
That was impossible. Homestead was still three weeks away. Chieftess Gax probably thought they were dead already. _Why had Djakka led them so far away?_ Ikram prayed the Chieftess would still be awake when they arrived, to see her son brought home, whole.  
  
If they arrived. With only four warriors left, they couldn’t survive another melee, much less an ambush.  
  
Time to run.  
  
Ikram tied the frayed end of the human’s leash to his belt, and the human clutched on his back like a youngling, arms wrapped tight. Ikram and what remained of his warparty jogged north toward their mountain.  
  
  
#


	3. Late

In sloshing shoes, Djakka led the party down the riverbank for six miles to throw off the ambush trail. A necessary detour, Kren said. But they were already weeks late, and the call of hibernation tugged at their bodies. Creatures of late autumn delayed them further, as the small party circumvented or fought will-o-wisps, foraging owlbears, and one determined dire badger. Twenty-four days after the ambush, they still journeyed, as nights grew colder and longer.  
  
At least the denwatchers would be chosen already. The risk of selection was gone. Ikram could walk in the door and hibernate in peace next to his litter-sisters. They’d already be asleep, fattened from the week-long Fullbelly feast. They were nicer asleep.  
  
The human jogged behind them when it could. Often, Ikram carried it on his back, where it slept. Humans didn’t sleep during the winter, Ikram knew, but given this thing’s sleeping habits, it would probably sleep through the winter and spring and maybe halfway into the summer too. Just shy of eight hours a day, it dozed, far more than the three hours the orcs slept on the trail.  
  
As the human snoozed on his back, Kren jogged lightly beside Ikram.  
  
“What are you going to do when we reach homestead?” Kren asked.  
  
“Sleep,” Ikram said.  
  
Kren gestured to the human. “With your new bunny.”  
  
Ikram’s lips pursed. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You need to think.”  
  
“What should I do?” Ikram whispered. He didn’t want to invite Blixtek’s opinion again. She’d already suggested eating it to fatten them for slumber.  
  
“You’re not going to be able to take care of it if you’re asleep,” Kren said, his voice modulated and slow. “You could let it go, before we get to the den.”  
  
“It’ll die.”  
  
“Probably.”  
  
“It saved Djakka. It saved all of us.”  
  
“You like that it likes you.”  
  
“I can’t just leave it outside. In the cold.” Humans hated cold.  
  
“You think it’ll fare better in the den?”  
  
“Maybe it can keep the denwatchers company.”  
  
Kren paused, his brow raised. “Now there’s a thought.”  
  
“What’s a thought?” Ikram asked.  
  
Kren stayed silent. Even as a child, he’d been a thinker of deep thoughts. Kren prepped for years, rather than months. Sometimes it was downright annoying, when Ikram could see a thought dawn on him and then break across his forehead like an egg.  
  
The twang of Blixtek’s bow broke the frustrated silence. Nearby, a raptor fell from the branches of a tall pine. Blixtek danced around on the crunching grasses, gloating.  
  
Djakka chuckled. “Better get it before the wolves.”  
  
She bounded off, with perky ears and her lips pulled back from her teeth.  
  
Djakka turned, his cheeks wan. “Let’s cook. We could all use some fattening.”  
  
They’d have to drink lard before they got fat enough to survive the winter, but Ikram said nothing. As he slowed, the sleeping human shifted position, burying its nose into the back of his neck. Cold nose, warm breath—both sent shivers down Ikram's spine.  
  
He set the human by a tree, then searched for wood not molded by the damp air.  
  
“You decided what to do with it yet?” Djakka asked, gathering wood alongside. For the Chieftess’s son, he never had much difficulty assimilating with the common litters.  
  
Ikram kicked off a mostly dry bit of bark from a fallen tree. “Kren thinks it could keep the denwatchers company.”  
  
“Does he?” Djakka said. “And what do you think?”  
  
Ikram looked over to the sleeping human, unresponsive, like a mini-hibernation each night. “I don’t want it to die.”  
  
“That’s what happens here. Humans die. Orcs die. Look at the leaves—they die too.”  
  
Ikram snapped off another branch with his foot and gathered it.  
  
“I won’t make you kill it,” Djakka said.  
  
_Someone else would kill it instead?_ Ikram’s lip curled. “I don’t want it to die. Just like I didn’t want you to die.”  
  
Djakka’s shoulders fell back as he drew up to his full height. Ikram had to tilt his head up to maintain eye contact. Their warparty leader was broad, strong, with the barest blue tint that suggested ogre blood. “What will you do to get what you want?”  
  
The mantra rolled off Ikram’s tongue. “Fight. Kill. Die.”  
  
Djakka breathed heavily, through his nose. Hot air breezed over Ikram’s face. Ikram and Kren and Blixtek might be older by two years, but Djakka had always been large, ahead of the curve. He’d fallen in easily with their group and led them through all the adventures that young orcs could have.  
  
Ikram didn’t break the stare. Djakka smiled and patted the side of Ikram’s face with his hand. “I’ll talk to Kren.”  
  
Ikram collected dried needles for kindling, and Blixtek returned brandishing a dead raptor-hawk while Kren dug the firepit near the sleeping human. The human had curled into a ball, arms covering its head and knees tucked up.  
  
“You up for cooking my midmorning snack?” Blixtek ripped out feathers and left them fluttering to the ground. She wasn’t being careful, leaving wakes of exposed sinew.  
  
Ikram traded her his kindling for the half-plucked bird. “You’re ruining the skin.”  
  
“That’s right. Your pet likes the skin, doesn’t it?”  
  
“Everyone likes the skin.” Ikram pulled out the feathers, eyes glued there so he didn’t have to look at Blixtek. “You’ve mangled it.”  
  
She shrugged. “I’ll shoot another for lunch.”  
  
A lie. The raptor birds, like most animals, had abandoned this area for the winter. The snow would fall soon. Fullbelly week had ended well before they’d nearly lost Djakka. Their leader had pressed on, so sure that they’d find bounty. _Something calls us,_ he’d said. _We must answer._  
  
Ikram plucked the tail-feathers. They had nothing to show for their journey but dead warriors and a human prisoner. _What was so important?_  
  
“Have you rutted the human yet?” Blixtek asked.  
  
Ikram narrows his eyes. “Don’t you dare.”  
  
“Nah, nah, not my flank of steed. I just wanted to know if you figured out whether it's a boy or girl or whatever yet. Or if it’s an adult.”  
  
“It’s an adult.”  
  
Blixtek raised her eyebrows and gave that cheeky half-smile that annoyed Ikram down to his bones.  
  
“Not by rutting,” he said. “I saw its teeth.”  
  
“Its teeth?”  
  
“Humans grow extra teeth when they’re adult.”  
  
“I’ve never seen one with extra teeth.”  
  
“They grow in the back. For mashing plants.”  
  
Blixtek feigned vomiting. “That’s disgusting. How do you know all this sod about humans?”  
  
Ikram shrugged. Kren’s older brother had run off with a human, although now Kren’s parents refused to acknowledge Hezzik had existed. For years, Hezzik had entertained them in the months between Fullbelly and the start of Slumber. Ikram and Kren would stay up as late as they could during the evenings, listening until they couldn’t open their eyes.  
  
Every Slumber, Ikram would fall asleep with Kren and Hezzik, but every year he’d wake up snuggled with his own sisters. Hezzik’s doing, undoubtedly.  
  
“We slept six hours last night,” Blixtek said. “Did you notice?”  
  
Ikram nodded. Slumber was getting closer. It would be harder and harder to stay awake.  
  
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” she said.  
  
Was Blixtek scared? Her eyes scanned the mostly bared canopy. Darkness hovered in the west. Ikram waved the dead, naked bird carelessly in front of Blixtek. “Time to burn this bird,” he said.  
  
Blixtek whacked his shoulder. “Don’t burn my lunch, rut-hole.”  
  
“I thought this was just a snack.” Ikram walked toward the fire. Kren crouched, coaxing a small flame into the kindling. Shaman Hatk could have had it roaring, but Kren hated magic. _Magic controls you, feeds on you like maggots in your blood._ Ikram wouldn’t know. He didn’t have the capacity. Blixtek plopped on the ground nearby.  
  
Ikram gutted, piked, and spit the raptor over the fire.  
  
The musk of the stripped bird gave way to a heady meaty aroma, and the human woke. It stretched and joined the warparty, drooling at the roasting bird like the rest of them.  
  
Boring work, cooking. Ikram turned to the human and caught its attention with two pokes to its shoulder.  
  
Big brown eyes.  
  
Ikram pointed to his chest. “Ikram.”  
  
The human nodded. Its mouth mimicked the word, with no sound, as it pointed with its forefinger. Ikram flinched and took the human’s hand to re-situate the fingers—two fingers forward, never one.  
  
The human huffed and nodded. It double-pointed properly to Kren and mouthed the name.  
“Kren,” Ikram confirmed.  
  
When it pointed to Blixtek, its mouth moved and grimaced, but didn’t seem right. Ikram pointed to his mouth and enunciated. “Blix-tek.”  
  
The human threw its hand up, nodded, and pointed into its mouth. The stub tongue wiggled, the pale scar sloppy with spit.  
  
Ikram looked away.  
  
The human poked him, twice, and double-pointed to Djakka.  
  
“Djakka,” Ikram said.  
  
The human frowned. Its mouth moved, wrong.  
  
Ikram shook his head. He enunciated, “Djak-ka.”  
  
Kren interrupted, “It’s mouthing ‘leader’.”  
  
The human nodded.  
  
“His name is Djakka,” Ikram clarified.  
  
“How’s that going to sound, the pet human calling the Chieftess’s son by his name?” Blixtek asked.  
  
“It’s not going to sound like anything. It can’t speak.” Ikram reached forward to turn the spit, and a flame leapt onto his sleeve. It scorched through, to the skin of his wrist as he cussed. The meat fell into the fire, and he piked it back out, before batting the flames off his burning arm.  
  
The human leapt up, its stone glowing fiercely. It reached forward with both hands and enclosed the wound. The burning abated instantly, and energy coursed through Ikram’s blood.  
  
“Don’t!” he barked. “Don’t waste your healing on small sod. I deserved that burn for my stupidity.”  
  
The human’s brown eyes angered, and its mouth closed into a thin line. It reached for Ikram’s left knife. Ikram swatted its hand away, and it grabbed a stick from the fire, brandishing the red-hot coal in the air so the glow increased.  
  
“What is it doing?” Blixtek asked.  
  
It put the coals to its palm. Skin sizzled, and the air filled with orcish curses. Ikram lunged forward, and the human stepped back, lowering the coal.  
  
With no caution, eyes locked on Ikram, the human touched its icon to its head. The stone glowed, and when the human opened its hand again, only fresh skin remained.  
  
“I see,” Kren said.  
  
The human raised the burning stick again. Ikram grabbed its arm before it hit coals.  
  
“Stop,” Ikram demanded.  
  
The human stared at him. Maybe there was fire in those sod brown eyes.  
  
“It’s showing us what it can do,” Kren said. “Humie, how many?”  
  
The human looked to Kren, fire in its eyes and on the coals. Ikram stole the stick and threw it back in the fire. Dumb sodding human.  
  
“We know it can do at least four. Or thinks it can.” Kren touched his head and held up one finger. He touched his head again and held up a second. Another touch, another finger.  
  
The human shrugged. It held up both hands, all its fingers splayed.  
  
“Ten?!” Blixtek said.  
  
“Our shamans don’t get that strong,” Kren said. “Not until they’re very old.”  
  
“Ikky said it's an adult,” Blixtek volunteered. Ikram shot her a glance, and she prodded the roasting bird. She muttered, “It has its sex teeth.”  
  
“I bet that’s all it knows,” Kren said. “Healing, and nothing else. No fireball, no lightning. Useless in a fight.”  
  
“Brave though.” Djakka’s hand stroked his chin. Ikram and the others knew better than to interrupt his thinking, so they stared silently at the cooking bird.  
  
When it smelled done, Ikram pulled it out, set it on a leather, and cut it.  
  
Five sections, without thinking.  
  
Djakka and Kren studied him while they ate in silence. The human leaned on Ikram while it tore meat off with its useless, flat teeth.  
  
They packed and moved as soon as the raptor was gone and the firepit was buried.  
  
Blixtek didn’t shoot any lunch.  
  
#


	4. Denwatcher

They arrived at homestead on Slumber’s Eve, trudging through six inches of snow. Kren brushed their tracks, but any tracker worth his hide could find footprints of packed ice.  
  
No river to obscure their tracks this time. They relied on luck alone.  
  
“Minudz,” Ikram muttered. _Lucky one._  
  
Kren turned his head back. “You say something?”  
  
“Its name is Minudz,” Ikram said.  
  
“Sod, Ikky, you named it?” Blixtek muttered through a chattering jaw.  
  
He wished she’d stop calling him Ikky, especially now that they were so close to home. If his sisters heard that, they’d never let him live it down.  
  
They approached the den mound. Ikram had never seen the den this far into winter, a lumpy hill unassuming against the backdrop of their fresh-frozen mountain to the east. The homestead was covered in snow, a blanketed slope near white-dusted trees. Black smoke wafted from the chimneys over the gray mountains beyond. The connected outhouse nearby was brushed clean. The hill opened, the door grinding against mud and grit, as a bowman’s arrow came into view, pulled taut.  
  
Djakka put his hands forward, for peace.  
  
“Son of Gax? You’re alive?”  
  
Djakka smiled and flipped his palms up. “I couldn’t disappoint my mother.”  
  
“Why is there a human?”  
  
“A prisoner. I’ll explain to the chieftess, after we warm.”  
  
“I can’t let a human in the den.”  
  
Djakka stepped forward, his imposing form dwarfing the bowman. “Keep it in the entryway.”  
  
“I can’t,” the bowman protested. “Outsiders aren’t allowed.”  
  
“You will, or I will carve my name on your bones.”  
  
The bowman scanned the horizon. Snow drifted slowly down, accumulating on Ikram’s eyelashes. The human’s mud hair was covered in the stuff. Its hands shook, clutched to his leather armor.  
  
The bowman relented and let them in. “Keep it by the door while I get the chieftess.”  
  
Blixtek strutted through the door, shucked off her bow, and announced, “Feed your prodigal daughter.” Denwatchers and old orcs by the fireside chuckled and gestured her to their table. Blixtek grabbed a hunk of sauced wolfback and ate while pacing between the table and the door.  
  
The bowman, Yekkan, returned with the aging Chieftess Gax. She hobbled forward, leered at her son, and pinched his nose with all the force her arthritic hands could muster.  
  
“You’re late,” she said.  
  
Djakka nodded. “Yes, mother.”  
  
“You went farther than I said.”  
  
“Yes, mother.”  
  
“You lost eight of my people. Fine, fresh warriors and a disciple of Monten.”  
  
“Yes, mother.”  
  
“And instead of those warriors, you brought back an other. A human.”  
  
“Yes, mother.”  
  
“Why do this?”  
  
Djakka’s mouth closed as he tried not to answer. Any time Djakka spoke of _the Call_ , he fueled the chieftess’s anger. The bowman manned the foyer portal, closing the curtain as though that would convince them he wasn’t listening.  
  
“Is this other why you were slowed?”  
  
“No, mother.”  
  
“Explain, idiot child.”  
  
“The human healed me hours from death.”  
  
The chieftess glared, angry with her son that he would get anywhere near death. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t have killed it after it healed you.”  
  
“It has a kismet.”  
  
“With you? I forbid it.”  
  
“With Ikky.”  
  
“Ah, and he refuses to let you kill it, so you take it prisoner, thinking it will die on the journey.” Chieftess Gax drew a pearl-handled dagger. “This is easily solved.”  
  
Ikram stiffened. The daggers of Chieftess Gax had killed a dozen score and carved out the loam of the mountain from other clans. She may be old, but she was still fast. Still strong. Still chief.  
  
“Not yet, mother,” Djakka said. “I need it for next year’s warparty. It can heal ten warriors. It wants to. It salivates to heal us.”  
  
“You will be hutch-bound next year for what you have put me through.”  
  
“Then you will have this human for two years.”  
  
The chieftess waved her hand. “I will have it killed now.”  
  
Djakka put out his arm. “We will turn back into the snow and take our chances for winter.”  
  
“You will die.”  
  
“Yes, mother.” Djakka watches the Chieftess, his eyes passive like dark river stones. Djakka was single-born, as were the Chieftess’ other children, now gone. The chieftess watched her son, with ire in her cheeks and eyes.  
  
She spit at the ground. “I wish you weren’t my only surviving child.”  
  
“As do I, mother.”  
  
“The denwatchers do not have time to attend a prisoner.”  
  
Kren glanced at Ikram with knowing green eyes, and then Ikram knew too.  
  
_Sod. Rutting untilled sod._  
  
The words escaped Ikram’s mouth before he had time to second-guess them. “I volunteer to denwatch.”  
  
Blixtek sucked in a breath, but neither Kren nor Djakka looked surprised.  
  
The chieftess raised her eyebrows. “You? The boy I found napping with the bunny?”  
  
Ikram set his jaw and nodded.  
  
The chieftess stepped toward him. “If I find you under when I wake, I will take everything you hold dear and eat it in front of you. Starting with the human.”  
  
“Its name is Minudz,” Ikram said.  
  
Kren hung his head in frustrated disappointment. Djakka snorted.  
  
“So stupid,” Blixtek muttered.  
  
The chieftess reached up and pinched Ikram’s nose. The human twisted the back of Ikram’s tunic, but Ikram’s arms held it in place.  
  
“Idiot children,” the chieftess said, and she turned. “Eat your fill. I do not want my prodigal warriors to starve in their sleep.”  
  
The chieftess hobbled out, and Blixtek punched Djakka in the shoulder.  
  
“You rutting pile of sod. You were going to make us winter outside? I ought to beat you into next week.”  
  
Djakka grinned. “Maybe after we eat, Blex, I’ll let you have your way with me.”  
  
Blixtek shoved past, all fury, but with a distinct red blush on the tips of her ears.  
  
Kren prodded Ikram’s arm. “I can give you four days. Sleep, and I’ll wake you when Longest Night starts.”  
  
“You’d never wake me,” Ikram said. “Besides, we can’t afford for you to go mad. You’re too smart.”  
  
“But you, Ikram,” Djakka added, “If you can throw a blade, I’ll keep you even if you’re mad as hopping beans. Our Shaman-killer, like your blades seek out magic.”  
  
Kren caught Ikram’s eye. “Come, eat with us.”  
  
“It’s good!” Blixtek said. Eavesdropper. “This fat kid can cook.”  
  
Ikram shook his head. “Denwatchers have plenty of time to eat.” His stomach soured. Twelve weeks awake. Two months of staving off the call of hibernation, or falling to madness.  
  
Plenty of time.

 

#


	5. The Longest Night

Once full, the rest of the warparty took their places curled on thick rugs and knotted with their families. Blixtek carved out a spot for herself between her littermates, shoving each to the side and wedging herself between. Her sister’s children didn’t so much as twitch as Blixtek tiptoed between their strewn legs.  
  
The eight other denwatchers, selected for their resilience and duty to the clan, took to dice games and cards, telling stories, tending the fire, and cooking. Some were veteran watchers, others spent months preparing for the task. Ikram was the ninth, the youngest, and the most at risk to fail the watch. The youngest always were.  
  
The human wanted to wander through the den, mud eyes wide, and tried to whenever it could. Thick rugs damped the sounds of Ikram chasing it down the second time.  
  
Ikram grasped the back of the human’s tunic. “Minudz, no!” he whispered.  
  
The human frowned, as Ikram walked it back to the denwatcher’s area. The bowman, Yekkan, stoked the fires where the other denwatchers gathered to drink coffee and gnaw on thick jerky.  
  
“The prisoner makes trouble again?” Yekkan whispered. Denwatchers had a way of whispering, using the back of their throats, that mimicked the soothing sounds of the fire. Ikram shook his head, unwilling to test his own whisper yet. Yekkan laughed, low and gentle.  
  
Another denwatcher, Tungsk, chuckled too. He was oldest, hair gray, and Ikram was sure he neared thirty-five. “Bring the thing here.” Tungsk gestured toward a spot by the fire.  
  
Ikram hesitated. Would Tungsk hurt it? Chain it? The human wriggled.  
  
“Child, I know how to handle humans. Bring it here.” Tungsk caught the human’s attention and gestured it over. Minudz looked back to Ikram, who nodded. It walked over on those skinny legs and sat next to the older orc. Tungsk examined it, pushing its face from side to side, peering in its eyes, tapping on its back. The human pulled back when Tungsk tried to look in its mouth.  
  
Tungsk grabbed its head firmly and pried open its bottom jaw, much like he would to a youngling with a tooth ache. Ikram watched.  
  
“Have you thought to teach it sign?” Tungsk asked.  
  
Ikram frowned. “It doesn’t even know orcish.”  
  
“Doesn’t it?” Tungsk said. It turned to the human. “Minudz, <do you want to learn to sign>?” Westish spilled out of Tungsk’s mouth, as easy as birdsong. His hands moved just as smooth.  
  
“You know sign language?” Ikram asked. “How?” Common tribes rarely used orc sign, though deaf and mixed tribes could be found all throughout the Afterlands. Raiders also made use of the silent language for ambush. Tungsk was a craftsman, not a tradesman or raider.  
  
“Hush, child,” Tungsk said. The human prodded the old orc’s shoulder, eager. “I am rusty, but it should be enough for now. Ikram, you will learn too. It is good to keep the mind occupied.”  
  
Yekkan brought Ikram a warm earthenware cup, filled with hot bitter liquid.  
  
Ikram pushed it back. “I don’t like coffee,” he said.  
  
Yekkan tipped the cup toward his face. “This is why I made it weak. If you sleep tonight, you won’t wake.”  
  
Ikram pulled it back from his nose. “It smells awful.”  
  
Yekkan smacked Ikram’s head lightly. “Of course. But there will be times before Watch’s End when we want to die. Then, we drink coffee.”  
  
“Coffee!” The other denwatchers cheered with their fire-whispers and sipped anew. Their game of Afterland Conquer seemed to have taken a poor turn, given the number of pieces toppled off the flat map. Yekkan seated himself with his own cup, cross-legged near Tungsk.  
  
Tungsk put the ham of one fist on the other and made a small circle. “Coffee,” he said. “<Coffee>”  
  
The human repeated the motion and touched the cup. “Coffee,” it signed. Its eyebrows went up over its mud eyes, in a question.  
  
“Good job. <Good job.>” Tungsk smiled, touched his chin with one flat hand, then brought that hand down to rest on the other.  
  
The human repeated it. Left out, Ikram tried too.  
  
Tungsk smiled at him too. “Good job. <Good job.>”  
  
Repeating the gesture was one thing, but the Westish? Far more embarrassing. “Where’d you learn Westish?”  
  
“Where did you learn Orcish?” Tungsk shrugged. “My mother.”  
  
Ikram huffed. “Where did your mother learn Westish, then?”  
  
“Her mother.”  
  
“Where’d—”  
  
Yekkan cut in. “Tungsk’s grandmother was human.”  
  
The human tapped Tungsk’s leg and gestured to itself.  
  
“Human,” Tungsk said, along with a sign. “<Human>”  
  
Yekkan repeated too, even before Ikram.  
  
“It’s made less trouble than I expected,” Yekkan said. “Why’d you take it prisoner anyway? Really?”  
  
“We didn’t. It followed us.”  
  
Yekkan drank. “So that stuff about the kismet was true?”  
  
Ikram tried his coffee to delay an answer, the smallest sip, and it scalded his tongue and assaulted his senses. Foul.  
  
The human looked concerned, its eyebrows knitted in and its lips folded together. It tried to take the mug.  
  
Yekkan removed the cup instead. “Humans don’t hibernate. Don’t waste coffee on it.”  
  
Ikram lowered his head, side-eyeing the human. Yekkan moved to his other side, so that Ikram could whisper. “I don’t know why it followed us. I stabbed it, right through its lungs. That was just after Fullbelly, when we finally decided to turn back home. But the next day, no scar, no blood, and it just followed us.”  
  
“A spy?” Yekkan narrowed his eyes. “Come to wipe us out in our sleep? It doesn’t look like much, but spies usually don’t.”  
  
“Once, on our journey back,” Ikram started, “we were ambushed by a Riverside warparty. Ten of them, with two shamans. I cut it loose to fight. But instead of running, Minudz snuck up on their bowman and strangled it with the rope. Arrows just missed my head.”  
  
“So it does have a kismet,” Yekkan said.  
  
“We lost two men, but the rest of us survived. All the Riverside were dead except two. The human had cuts all down its side. But it healed that, healed me, healed Blixtek. Kren and Djakka were fine, no surprise. But the human bee-lined for one of the surviving Riverside warriors, icon glowing. It meant to heal the enemy.”  
  
“After killing one?”  
  
“That’s the kicker. Minudz didn’t kill the enemy bowman, just strangled him to sleep. We didn’t realize until too late, and the bowman escaped.”  
  
“You let an enemy go?”  
  
“They don’t know our clan.”  
  
“Could it have tracked you?”  
  
“No. We walked the river.”  
  
Yekkan downed the last of his coffee. “It heals orcs. Maybe it’s a quarter.”  
  
“Maybe.” Ikram doubted that. The human didn’t have any green in its skin, no tinge in its nailbeds.  
  
“Could still be a kismet,” Yekkan said. He passed back the coffee, which Ikram tried again. The taste wasn’t so foul the second time. Yekkan pat Ikram on the back. “And if it does end up trying to kill us all, at least we will have been entertained.”  
  
“Who’s going to kill us all?” another denwatcher called low, ears pricked their direction. Lente, Ikram thought.  
  
“Minudz,” Yekkan fire-whispered.  
  
“It won’t,” Ikram snapped back.  
  
The denwatchers shushed him. Even the human stuck its fingers toward him, double pointed, face stern.  
  
The fire crackled in the brief silence. The gamers murmured soon after, Tungsk restarted his orcsign lessons, and Ikram finished his weak coffee, sip by terrible sip.  
  
The human passed out for the night by the fire, its back pressed against Ikram, but Ikram couldn’t stay still. To stay still was to fall asleep, and he couldn’t risk that. He peeled the human’s arm from his, and stuck furs where he’d been for Minudz to lean on.  
  
Ikram and another denwatcher—Magga, who’d lost the game of Conquer early on—took a round streaking around the encampment in their barest, racing. Adrenaline shot through their veins, far more effective than coffee, as snow sprayed their naked legs. Ikram’s covered knives smacked against his thighs, his quiver and bow tight against the movement of his arms.  
  
They dropped and made snow angels, all well and quiet around homestead. After, Ikram and Magga shook themselves off and rushed back inside to let the warmth of the den wake their skin back up as they breathed hard.  
  
“How long have you been a denwatcher?” Ikram asked. Magga was a swordsman, with berry-dyed purple hair and a long scar across his eye.  
  
“Six years, off-and-on.”  
  
“And you played Rugged before that?”  
  
“As a teen. Hurt my knee, and the year after I healed I joined a warparty instead.”  
  
“Then the eye?”  
  
“What’s wrong with my eye?” Magga touched his face.  
  
Ikram blushed, ears reddening as he rummaged for the opening to his trousers. Sod. He shouldn’t have brought up the eye.  
  
“You’re too easy, baby Ikky.”  
  
“Does every rutting orc know about that nickname?”  
  
“It's better than what they’ll call you when they wake up.” Magga pulled his pants and tunic on in the foyer.  
  
Ikram’s face pinched. “What’s that?”  
  
“Personally, I’m rooting for human-rutter.” Magga grinned wide, and ticked off fingers, his lone emerald eye scanning the ceiling in memory. “But also on the table is one-who-adopts-humans, bad-at-slaying, love-knife, one-who-carries-humans-like-a-horse, human-trainer, inept-human-trainer, can’t-find-an-orc-lover, although that last name is hardly new—”  
  
“Do you want me to grind your face in the fire?”  
  
“Try it, baby Ikky.” Magga’s grin didn’t fade as he walked from the foyer to warm by the fire. Ikram pinched his nails into his hands, trying to grind the nickname out of his head. How was this just the start of the watch? He should have taken Kren up on the offer for a few days of sleep. The draw of hibernation lived just behind his brow, begging him to close his eyes.  
  
Ikram seated himself in front of the portal, to watch the front of the den for approaching danger, or deer, if they could get so lucky. Sunshine weakened in the winter, which was fine for those who slept, but denwatchers had to supplement their intake to avoid light-starvation. The essence beneath their skin that drew energy from the sun was not as effective in winter’s low light, and even a skinny deer might break the monotony of dried or smoked jerky. Thick, warped glass insulated the portal, imported dozens of years ago at great expense. He let his fingers touch the cold brown-tinged surface, his arms extended.  
  
“Don’t close your eyes,” he told himself. The dark of the outside world was only illuminated by starlight, but the night was not cloudy enough to dim the impertinence of the stars. He counted them, around the edges of the portal, counted the trees, counted his fingers. Again and again, until light broke over the horizon.  
  
“You’re not asleep, are you, child?” Tungsk asked.  
  
Ikram turned to face the old orc as his eyes adjusted. “No sir.”  
  
“Stretch your legs.” Tungsk pulled up on Ikram’s tunic. “The Chieftess’s son would be annoyed if you died.”  
  
Ikram snorted. “People don’t die from stiff legs.”  
  
“People die from talking back to their elders,” Tungsk said. “Besides, you need to wrangle your human.”  
  
“Wrangle?” Ikram repeated.  
  
Tungsk tilted his head toward the den. Ikram jumped up, legs tingling as blood was forced through them. Rushed and unsteady, Ikram crossed the foyer to the den, searching for Minudz.  
  
It was across the foyer, kneeling at the side of a litter of younglings, their soft green bellies exposed in the dim firelight.  
  
“Minudz!” Ikram whispered. “Get back here!”  
  
The human looked up and touched its icon to its head. The yellow stone glowed, too bright for that part of the den. Nearby orcs stirred. Ikram stiffened. He sidled toward the human, stepping cautiously to avoid sleeping orcs. What would an orc do, if it woke to find a strange human in its den? Latch onto its throat with teeth and nails, probably. Bleed it dry before it had a chance to heal itself.  
  
The human prodded the little bellies of the younglings and pulled one into its lap. The skinny green youngling was cradled gently in the human’s arms.  
  
Would a screaming infant wake the rest of the den? Ikram wouldn’t know, but then again, he’d always been a hard sleeper. “Minudz, don’t.” He stepped carefully over another body.  
  
The human massaged a leather canteen and ignored Ikram, as usual.  
  
Ikram accidentally kicked one of the sleeping orcs, then then tripped over the next. They both groaned, but didn’t wake, as Ikram continued toward the human. It had the canteen nozzle in the infant’s mouth, and the babe suckled in its sleep.  
  
“That better not be liquor,” Ikram whispered. “I swear, you pink little—”  
  
The human put two fingers up, a shushing motion. Had it seen Djakka do that when he led the warparty? Or had Tungsk taught that as part of signing?  
  
The human was feeding the second infant by the time Ikram reached it.  
  
“You can’t,” Ikram said, and yet he didn’t stop Minudz as the human rocked the youngling. These ones were fall-born, with skinny toes, and short legs that could still only waddle. Too small to live. If an infant couldn’t survive hibernation, how was it supposed to survive the Afterlands?  
  
The human took the third and fed it too.  
  
“Why?” Ikram asked, although even if it understood, it couldn’t answer.  
  
When the human finished with the last of the runts, Ikram led it back to the fire by its sleeve, treading lightly through the prone bodies. Yekkan had more coffee, for the midmorning, and three of the denwatchers had gone out scouting, including Magga. Tungsk and a younger denwatcher, Hamma, played the human-imported chess.  
  
Ikram hadn’t realized that the den had a chessboard.  
  
“What did your Minudz do?” Yekkan asked. He double-pointed to the coffee, but Ikram shook his head.  
  
“It fed the younglings.”  
  
“The fall-born litter, I saw. You’d think Ekken would know better. And the light?”  
  
“That’s its healing,” Ikram said.  
  
Yekkan sipped the coffee. “Maybe they will last through the week then. I’ll have to amend my wager.”  
  
“You bet on who will die?”  
  
“It is very boring being awake all winter. You want in?”  
  
“No,” Ikram said. His sisters had turned him off gambling at a young age.  
  
“I’ll ask again next week. Tend the fire. I need a run and a leak.”  
  
Ikram moved to the fire and sat next to the human. It waved and signed to him, but he only caught a few words from Tungsk’s earlier lesson. “Hello,” and “How are you?” and “Do you want coffee?” He tried to answer slowly, pronouncing each syllable, but the human’s most used phrase was “I can’t understand you.”  
  
At least Ikram could understand that phrase, every time. 

 

#


	6. Mad Moon

The human fed the younglings twice daily with a cocktail of mashed yams, water, and melted fat. Ekken’s litter grew plump, slept soundly, and moved off the death-wager by the second week. Under Ikram’s watch, the human found freedom in the den over the next month. Daily, it wandered through the sleeping orcs, peering into their faces.  
  
“Who is this?” it signed, over an elder.  
  
Ikram peered. Sweat shone underneath the elder’s sleeping tunic, soaking the collar. “Monten,” he whispered, along with a finger-spelling. “Kren’s father.”  
  
“He is sick. I will make broth and add medicine.”  
  
“What kind of medicine?” Ikram asked. “He is a shaman.”  
  
The human bent down, and smelled Monten’s breath, rested its hand on his forehead. Matted dark hair gleamed under the human’s hand, so unlike the bright red of Kren and his siblings. “Medicine will help pain,” it said.  
  
“What pain? He is asleep.”  
  
The human rolled its eyes and pulled Ikram’s hands to Monten’s neck—stiff and swollen. It signed, “Medicine will help that.”  
  
“He won’t like taking human medicine,” Ikram said.  
  
The human made a rude gesture, then signed, “He also won’t like being dead. You can give him the medicine, and then it can be orc medicine.”  
  
“Minudz…”  
  
“What?” Its sign was big, and clearly annoyed.  
  
Ikram paused his hands. How was he supposed to explain to the human that some people are meant to die? _But he’d let the human save the younglings. What was one more?_ He asked, “What medicine?”  
  
“I will show you.” The human picked its way back across the tangles of sleeping bodies.  
  
Ikram followed, tracing its confident steps.  
  
It stopped amid the sleepers, shoulders tense, and signed, “I’m not an orc.”  
  
Ikram’s brow furrowed. “I know,” he signed back.  
  
The human waved him off. “Forget it.”  
  
“Hey!” Ikram said. “Talk to me.” The human continued, as though it hadn’t heard. Ikram grabbed its upper arm. “Minudz. Forget what?”  
  
The other denwatchers hushed him from their tables.  
  
“I don’t know how to say what I want to say,” the human signed. “I am not an orc. I am not an enemy. I am not meat.”  
  
“I know that.”  
  
“Do you?” it signed.  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
The human’s lips pursed, its mud eyes cast over the den, the watchers, the fire. Its sign was small, quiet. “I want to go outside.”  
  
“You can’t,” Ikram signed. They both knew: the denwatchers were under orders to hunt it down if it tried to escape. Ikram knew it wasn’t a spy, but the chieftess had irrefutable orders.  
  
Minudz signed, “I know,” and continued toward the kitchen for broth and medicine. Its steps were light and confident through the tangle of bodies. Ikram, less so.  
  
When Ikram reached the fire, the human was already preparing broth and signing with Yekkan. Yekkan was better at talking with the human than Ikram, which was entirely unfair. They’d both been learning for three weeks, and Ikram was the human’s keeper, wasn’t he?  
  
An ache plucked at the back of his skull, and he reached for the coffee pot. Yekkan could talk to the finicky human, while Ikram drank coffee and tried to figure out why in the Seven Realms he agreed to denwatch when he could be sleeping.  
  
Minudz’s damn fault, for sure. It and its stupid cow-eyes.  
  
Ikram’s hand jerked back, the kettle with it, before he realized he’d even been burned. He grunted loudly and clamped his good hand over his mouth. The kettle clattered to the ground. The denwatchers tensed, scanning the sleeping bodies, but none moved. Waking an orc from hibernation would result in madness, death, or both, especially after tonight’s mid-way point.  
  
“Ikram?” a denwatcher fire-whispered. Hamma. “You hurt?”  
  
“I’m fine.”  
  
“Use the potholder, dwarf-brain,” Yekkan said by the cook-fire. Ikram found the thick-weave cloth and picked up the steaming kettle. The rug was soaked through. It would have to hang dry before it could be placed back on the hard-packed ground.  
  
Another mess. He ran his fingers through his hair as he stared.  
  
“Don’t sulk, Ikky.” Magga thrust his hips forward repeatedly. “Your human’s there to rut it better.”  
  
“Suck a dwarf,” Ikram said. His hands moved to sign it, but the burn on his palm flared in pain, and he sucked air in through his teeth.  
  
“After you,” Magga returned.  
  
By his side far too quick, the human examined Ikram’s hand, attending like an over-zealous parent.  
  
Ikram snatched his hand away and tried to pick up the rug. “Leave me alone, Minudz.”  
  
“You’re hurt,” it signed.  
  
“I’ll live.” Ikram refilled the kettle from the water barrel. A light shone behind him, dim yellow reflected on the water, and the human grabbed his burned hand.  
  
Skin-on-skin contact stung in the first fraction of a second, but in the next moment cool bliss traveled up his veins and a rush coursed through his body. The rush found the places his brain pinched together and rolled them right. The tightness behind his eyes loosened, and Ikram felt newborn.  
  
Along with all the anger that comes from being unwillingly shunted through a birth canal.  
  
Ikram shoved the kettle onto the barrel, splintering the wood, and elbowed the human backward.  
  
“Hey!” Magga grabbed his shoulder, his good eye boring into Ikram’s face. Ikram snarled and snatched away, face hot.  
  
“Mad Moon tonight.” Tungsk watched from the foyer. “We are all tested.”  
  
Ikram watched the old orc sign the words to the human, and suddenly the den was too-too small and too-too stuffed with people. He shoved past Magga and jammed on his boots and furs as he stumbled toward the door.  
  
“Don’t go far.” Tungsk handed Ikram his bow, and a quiver of arrows. “The sky is too bright tonight for wandering. Plus, you’ll want to be back for Piccup root.”  
  
Ikram pulled the bow onto his back, checked his sheathes, and shoved out the thick door into the cold air. Mad Moon, the full moon in the middle of winter, marked the middle of denwatching. Six more weeks. Tungsk was right about being tested. Ikram’s patience was thinner than fog. Sleep madness would be better than this.  
  
Outside, the world was still.  
  
Ikram breathed and let the frigid winter air soothe him. With his furs tucked tight around his neck, the stuffy den mound and all its confinement and responsibility felt far away. Sholathoam was a beautiful month. Snow and ice had melted in the recent days, leaving the ground just softened.  
  
The moon hung high above, in her massive glory. He stuck up his thumb to cover her spot in the sky. An illuminated halo encircled his nail.  
  
“Make me mad now,” he said to the moon. “I’ll blot you out of the sky.”  
  
_Fight me,_ the moon said back. Ikram heard her voice only in his head. Maybe he was already mad.  
  
The coarse dead grasses crunched under his feet, and he walked southeast toward the moon and the mountains. Something drew him, convinced him that on a mountaintop he could get closer to the moon, skewer it out of the sky with a well-placed throw. Or maybe he’d come across a lone dwarf and get to kill it and bury its bearded corpse under lunar soil.  
  
He climbed the eastward mountain, over shifted boulders and bony trees. Needles from evergreens marked some of the steep path. He’d taken trials here, to became a man of the tribe. After he succeeded, his sisters had been nice to him for almost a whole afternoon. Almost.  
  
Smoke diffused gently into the night sky. He passed barren mid-winter fields of other tribes, as the moon listed from her zenith. Cold seeped into Ikram’s skin. A herd of deer rustled through the low brush in the forest-tundra.  
  
If he shot one now, he’d have to carry the meat all the way back to the den before he could cook it. A low rumble hit his stomach at the thought. He should have brought food. He pulled his bow taught, aimed at a buck whose antlers hadn’t fallen.  
  
Before he could loose an arrow, the buck dropped dead, pierced through the neck.  
  
The herd scattered; some passed him.  
  
Ikram silently accused the moon.  
  
The moon shrugged. _Not my fault._  
  
Ikram peered closer at the felled deer, barely daring to blink his eyes. Sleep madness, for sure. He might be awake at the end of watch, but he’d have to be put down. His sisters would probably fight for the privilege.  
  
An elf emerged from the wood, its hair draped over its shoulders and a longbow on its arm. It took a knife and scored the deer from anus to throat, making blindingly quick work of the buck's skin. The hide shucked off in one piece.  
  
Ikram considered raising his bow for only a fraction of a second. He’d get one shot, and he wasn’t in range to throw a knife.  
  
_Coward,_ the moon said.  
  
Ikram slid behind a tree, in case the moon tried to give away his position. The elf looked up at the movement. Deer musk lingered in the air.  
  
Another long-haired skinny thing emerged from the trees and patted the ranger elf on the back. Ikram chewed his cheeks as a third, fourth, and fifth emerged.  
  
They just kept coming.  
  
“This is your fault,” he signed at the moon.  
  
_Want to fight me about it?_  
  
One of the elves pointed to the western sky. A column of thick smoke wafted into the cloudless dawn, dissipating over the stars in a haze.  
  
Ikram’s heart and liver clenched. An orc den. These elves were den raiders.  
  
The elves seemed to settle, building a fire to cook their meat. They broke the antlers with far-off laughter. Some kind of game.  
  
As the elves cavorted, Ikram stepped back. He didn’t have time to follow the moon. He had to warn the homestead.  
  
_Now or never, baby Ikky,_ the moon said.  
  
Apparently even the moon knew his nickname.  
  
Ikram backed off the hill slowly, his ears primed for any sound, staying downwind of the elves. As soon as he was far enough away that his heart stopped fearing an arrow, he ran.  
  
The moon lamented overhead. _I thought we were going to fight._  
  
#


	7. Sister Tribes

As Ikram sprinted, the moon laughed at his back. His lungs burned, his hair was sweat-drenched, and his furs rubbed in the wrong places. Sweat flung from his upper lip and cheeks; he dragged his arm across his face to keep the stuff from blinding him.  
  
He hoped the ground would be hard enough to hide his tracks. He hoped the elves couldn’t follow the scent trail from his sweat. He hoped that they hit a different orc den first, not home.  
  
He hoped the gods didn’t hear that last prayer and damn his homestead out of spite.  
  
With the moon still in the sky, the sun rose to heat Ikram’s neck, a luxury in the near-frozen air. The whole world knew tribes were most vulnerable between Mad Moon and spring. Even if the dens managed to defend themselves, orcs woken to fight would descend into a drooling, blistering madness for the rest of their natural life.  
  
Ikram cut northward through the trees toward the column of smoke from his den. His wasn’t the only den in the Afterlands, even on this mountain, but there were fewer than a half dozen in a thirty-mile radius.  
  
His heart took over his ears when he stopped to gage direction again. By sight only, he found the way, breathing in shallow gasps. His burning legs didn’t stop. Darkness crept around his eyes, but even if he fell into hibernation and the chieftess had him executed, first he would warn the other watchers.  
  
With the mound in sight, he sped up, and barreled into the wall. His breath came in short pants, never enough, as he clutched the door.  
  
Magga opened it.  
  
“Put—” Sod, Ikram didn’t have enough breath. He signed, “Put out the fires.”  
  
“I don’t understand you,” Magga said.  
  
Ikram shoved his way inside, weakly, but Magga moved out of the way. He took the kettle from its hatch—by the cloth this time—and doused the flames.  
  
Yekkan snatched back his shoulder. “What are you doing?”  
  
“—” Ikram’s mouth opened and shut, but he still couldn’t catch his breath. “Elf raiding party,” he signed. “Put out the fires.” As soon as he finished signing, he clutched his knees and sank.  
  
Yekkan took command, giving orders in an urgent fire-whisper. The denwatchers closed the main chimney and piled rocks on the flames to keep the heat.  
  
Tungsk grabbed Ikram’s shoulders and forced his gaze. “Did they follow you?”  
  
Ikram shook his head.  
  
“Are you sure they’re raiders and not questers?” Yekkan asked.  
  
“I’m sure.” Ikram gulped for breath. “They pointed to the smoke columns. There’s at least twenty. Southeast.”  
  
“Sod. No one ever keeps more than ten watchers. They’ll be trounced.”  
  
“Our sister tribes. We need to warn them,” Magga said.  
  
“Magga…” Tungsk started.  
  
“I’ll go. If I leave now, maybe they can get their fires out in time,” Magga said. “I did the Rugged circuit. I know where about they are. If not, I can follow the smoke.” He snorted.  
  
“You can’t outrun twenty elves,” one of the other denwatchers said. Kikrett, the king of Conquer. Not that games mattered now.  
  
Magga pulled on his furs. “You never saw me play.”  
  
“You ran the whole way back?” Tungsk asked Ikram. “How far away are they?”  
  
“Thirty miles, East Southeast. They were eating,” Ikram said.  
  
Tungsk nodded, clapped Magga on the shoulder, and gave him instructions on which tribes to prioritize.  
  
Where was the human? Was it curled somewhere taking a nap? His gaze swept the full den, looking for unkempt brown hair.  
  
Minudz stood in the foyer with its medicine pack strapped to its back. A pair of water-canteens hung at its waist. Its jaw was set. “I want to help,” it signed.  
  
“No,” Ikram whispered sternly, along with the sign.  
  
“Two is better than one,” the human signed back.  
  
“Minudz, you will only slow me down,” Magga said.  
  
The human’s face was angry. “I want to go.”  
  
“No.” Ikram grabbed its pack and the scruff of its tunic and held tight.  
  
Tungsk tied Magga’s pack on. “If you run fast,” Tungsk said, “you’ll get to warn three.”  
  
Magga nodded and ripped the door open.  
  
The human touched its icon to its head and caught Magga’s arm. The yellow healing glow entered, settling on Magga’s bum knee. It pulled a canteen off its hip and tossed it to Magga as he pressed through the heavy door.  
  
“Goodbye,” Magga said.  
  
He was off into the full-day’s sun, a streak of shamrock skin and magenta hair. Two swords and a couple of atrocity knives against time and twenty elves.  
  
“Lente, clear the rear porthole,” Yekkan ordered. “Kikrett, the front. Hamma, coffee, as strong as we can make it. It’s going to be a long night.”  
  
Ikram released the human after Lente had snaked out to clear the dirt and snow from the rear porthole. Minudz glared at Ikram.  
  
“Will Magga come back?” it asked. Its hands trembled as it signed.  
  
Ikram grabbed its shoulders and pulled it close until his chin was right against its mussed hair. The human shook, its face pressed into sweat-soaked clothes, and leaned into the hug. Ikram’s lungs ached from the run, but the human’s aroma of tart medicines eased the tension. Something bloomed in his chest, smooth and warm. A heart attack?  
  
Yekkan cleared his throat. “Minudz, the tonic…needs to be looked at,” Yekken said. His fire-whisper cracked in the middle, betrayed by something behind Yekkan’s glassy eyes. Didn’t he have family outside the den? A transplanted sibling, maybe. Ikram stepped back, and swayed, as his eyes lost focus.  
  
The human moved toward the recently doused cookfire. The medicine simmered there, in broth. Monten lay near the den wall now, away from the others. The old shaman shook in his sleep. If contagious, he’d be quarantined in a burrow.  
  
“You”—Yekkan double-pointed to Ikram—“need coffee. Go.”  
  
Ikram went to see Hamma about some of the infused syrup. Hamma stirred the thick pot, his eyes glazed. Ikram waved his hand in front of Hamma’s face. “You stuck in the sky?”  
  
“Tonight’s Mad Moon,” Hamma said.  
  
Ikram nodded. “She’s looking for a fight today.”  
  
“What?” Hamma broke from his trance.  
  
Ikram shook his head. “Nothing. I need a shot of coffee.”  
  
Hamma nodded and poured him one. “Did you say something about the moon?”  
  
“It’s just the sleep madness. The moon jeered at me all last night.”  
  
“Perhaps you saw the future even without Piccup Root.” Hamma passed him the tiny cup, with a thumbful of black sludge. This smelled worse than normal, bitter and deadly, but Ikram was far beyond hating coffee.  
  
“Did anyone take Root this year?”  
  
“We all did, except Minudz,” Hamma said. “Low dose, since blight killed most of the blooms last year. The shamans left us only a little, but that was enough.”  
  
“You see something?”  
  
Hamma stopped. “Never ask that before Long Night is over. We can’t say.”  
  
“But you’re grim. That’s not good.”  
  
Hamma chewed his cheeks and stirred the pot. “Magga’s going to arrive at the other dens, during Mad Moon, with purple hair. They’ll think he’s a vision.”  
  
Ikram pursed his lips, squeezed his hand on Hamma’s thick shoulder, and drew the hefty orc into a hug. Ikram’s sweat-sticky skin stuck to Hamma, who smelled of tarragon and distress and sugar. Hamma was one of the few denwatchers who didn’t call him Ikky or tease him about Minudz.  
  
Ikram loosened his grip, and Hamma returned to stirring the coffee sludge. “The moon jeered you?” he asked. “Does she have grand plans?”  
  
“Nah.” Ikram shrugged and grinned. “She just wanted a punching date.”  
  
Hamma chuckled. “Oh? What will you tell your pet human?”  
  
“The moon is massive. She’ll let me bring a friend,” Ikram teased.  
  
“Friend?”  
  
“Friend. Prisoner. Pet. Whatever.” Ikram double-pointed toward the ceiling. “The moon is a hulking beauty, and I’m gonna fight her.”  
  
Now that Hamma felt better, maybe the coffee would start tasting better. He moved for a second tiny cupful, but Hamma swatted his hand. “No, you greedy nymph. We must conserve. Come back when you’ve defeated the moon.”  
  
Denied, Ikram turned to find the human, wherever it was hiding. As he looked, Lente rushed in, breathing hard. He bee-lined for a smothered fire and hovered his hands by the stone, trying to take in whatever warmth remained.  
  
“Rear portal clear,” Lente said. The low whispers sounded strange while not accompanied by crackling flames. Sleeping orcs around the den breathed in harmony, except Monten. The sick old shaman wheezed and shivered under thick blankets.  
  
Yekkan held a single chimney flap barely open, to release a wisp of smoke.  
  
Ikram caught his attention. “Where’s Minudz?” he asked.  
  
Yekkan looked toward Monten, frowned at the lack of Minudz, and closed the chimney again. They scanned the den of sleeping orcs but found no human. Its bed of blankets was empty. Ikram kicked through the furs anyway, just to make sure.  
  
Yekkan held up the canvas bag. “Its pack is still here.”  
  
“Maybe it’s taking a whiz,” Hamma suggested. “Check the tunnel to the outhouse?”  
  
“It left with Tungsk,” Kikrett said, from his post at the front portal.  
  
“What?” Ikram said.  
  
“Tungsk took it outside,” Kikrett said.  
  
“Without its healing pack?” Yekkan asked.  
  
Ikram swallowed. “Minudz is not allowed outside.”  
  
Kikrett shrugged. “Tungsk said it was fine.”  
  
Ikram wanted to strangle the skinny little gamer. The human was his. His prisoner, his responsibility. He shouldered the door.  
  
“Where are you going?” Yekkan asked.  
  
“Outside.”  
  
Yekkan grabbed Ikram’s arm. “You’ll give away our position.”  
  
“And Tungsk won’t?” Ikram asked.  
  
“If Tungsk is with Minudz, they’ll both be fine.”  
  
“You won’t find them,” Kikrett said. “They left toward the villages. They took flint.”  
  
Yekkan figured their plan out first. “They’re going to start fires.”  
  
Ikram rubbed his hands across his face. They were going to start fires to disguise the output of the mountain’s dens. The elf raiders wouldn’t know which smoke trails to chase. He paced the foyer, as his blood boiled higher and higher.  
  
Yekkan touched his shoulder. “Ikram, it will be fine.”  
  
Ikram pulled back and slid down the wall. He unsheathed an atrocity knife and carved into the hard-packed dirt of the foyer.  
  
Yekkan crouched and signed, “Minudz will be fine.”  
  
“Why couldn’t Tungsk go by himself?” Ikram signed, his fingers particularly forceful.  
  
“His joints. Minudz can heal him, so he isn’t in pain. They’ll be faster together.”  
  
Ikram huffed, unconvinced. “But it’s mine.”  
  
“I know,” Yekkan signed.  
  
“Humans hate the cold,” Ikram signed.  
  
Yekkan asked Kikrett, “Was Minudz wearing furs?”  
  
“Wrapped like a tiny, bald-faced bear,” Kikrett said.  
  
“See? It will be fine.” Yekkan stood. “Be patient. We are watchers. Patience is our craft.”  
  
Ikram sneered and sketched on the floor next to his thigh. The moon appeared in the dirt and laughed at him. _Fight me, coward._  
  
He stabbed the moon, again and again, and stomped the dirt until the whole sketch disappeared; then started over.  
  
“My human better not die out there,” Ikram seethed.  
  
_Want to fight me about it?_ she teased.  
  
Ikram stabbed the moon again.

#


	8. Voices

In the week without fire, Ikram spent hours standing over Djakka and Kren as they slept. Kren had taken the time to section and braid his crimson hair. Djakka’s beard grew lush and dark. Once, he stood over Blixtek. Tucked under blankets, her ears stayed free, as though still eavesdropping. Ikram stared down at his friends, at the peace on their faces. Sleeping men did not give orders. They couldn’t tell him what to do. Even inches from them, he was alone.  
  
On the eighth day, Tungsk returned.  
  
Ikram felt stares on the tips of his ears as he watched the rear portal. He turned to see Yekkan and Tungsk speaking with their lowest fire-whispers at the entrance, but the human wasn’t with them.  
  
“Where’s Minudz?” Ikram signed sharply. Neither Yekkan nor Tungsk answered, even though they both saw him. _How dare he—_ Tension built in Ikram’s shoulders as he trod between sleeping blanket-wrapped bodies. He wanted to scream. _How dare he come back without Minudz._ The grit of hard beans rubbed against Ikram’s cheeks, his gums, releasing that bitter coffee flavor he couldn’t manage without. Sleep dogged behind his eyes, leaving small purple phantoms in the wakes of movement.  
  
The moon chuckled. _Mad now?_ Ikram batted her away. _Fight me,_ she said.  
  
Yekkan side-stepped into Ikram’s path, blocking him from Tungsk. Kikrett and Lente watched while Hamma manned the front portal.  
  
Ikram growled over Yekkan’s shoulder. “Where is my human?”  
  
“We need to talk,” Tungsk said. His empty hands were splayed, but Ikram had too much ire to be placated.  
  
“It is mine. You took it.”  
  
“Ikram—” Yekkan tried.  
  
“No!” Ikram barked, his fire-whisper lost. Yekkan shushed him with angry eyes, and Ikram lowered his voice again. “You cannot dance in here and not make amends. I want it back. If it is dead, I want its body.”  
  
“It’s back,” Tungsk said.  
  
“Where?”  
  
“I’ll tell you after you calm down.” Tungsk’s wrinkled face scanned the others, grazing their now-interested expressions. “In private.”  
  
Ikram snorted. “Private? In a den?” The denwatchers knew all each other’s habits. Lente bit his own toenails while on watch. Hamma and Kikrett snuck through the tunnel to the outhouse together and always returned with secret smiles. Yekkan cracked every joint in his body many times a day. And everyone knew that Ikram argued with the moon.  
  
Tungsk grabbed Ikram’s shoulder and tugged toward the outhouse tunnel. “Come,” he said.  
  
Ikram shoved back. “Get off me, you old thieving coward.”  
  
Tungsk raised his eyebrows, and quick as a viper, put Ikram into a full headlock. Ikram clawed at the leathery arm around his neck. He kicked uselessly and tried to grab a knife but found his whole belt gone. Yekkan held it. Ikram choked and sputtered, as yellow phantom moons appeared.  
  
_Fight me,_ they squeaked. _Fight me. Fight me. ___  
  
Tungsk marched Ikram through the fifty-meter tunnel to where the acrid air of the outhouse was trapped. Tungsk released his neck. Ikram stumbled and rubbed his throat.  
  
The tiny moons faded. _Fight me. Fi—_  
  
Ikram held Tungsk’s stare anew, but something different lived in those old green eyes now. Pity, maybe.  
  
Rut him for that.  
  
“Child, this is going to be hard to hear.” Tungsk didn’t have a weapons belt either.  
  
Ikram’s brow furrowed.  
  
Tungsk fixed his eyes to the hard-packed floor. “For three days and three nights, we set fires. We sparked flint against mounds of dry brush, we sacrificed a hut in each village, we lit up saplings. The human didn’t even sleep. It healed me, it healed itself, we kept going.”  
  
Ikram watched, but Tungsk’s eyes never came back up to his.  
  
“On the fourth day, it had to sleep. We made camp. I was plotting out the next day’s fires on my map, when I heard the elves.”  
  
Elves. Ikram’s nails pinched into his palms. A growl escaped his throat.  
  
“I shook Minudz awake, and its eyes glazed over. It grabbed my sword and tried to stab me. I dodged, and it spoke.”  
  
“Minudz can’t speak.”  
  
“Someone was speaking _through_ it.”  
  
“It doesn’t even have a tongue.”  
  
Tungsk ignored him. “I ran,” he said, “but I didn’t go far. Once out of sight, I trailed it. It walked straight into the elf raiders.”  
  
_Raiders._ What was it thinking, facing them alone?  
  
“It spoke to the elves, in posh Westish. Stomped its feet. Gave commands. Insulted them. It demanded results. One elf explained about the confusing smoke, the strange fires, and the human cut the elf’s throat with my sword. In a split second, just slashed it open. ‘Do better or die,’ I heard.”  
  
Tungsk’ tongue stilled. Sweat leaked down Ikram’s back, from the warm air, from the furs, from anticipation. When his mouth wouldn’t work, Ikram signed, “And?”  
  
“And Minudz stabbed itself through the stomach,” Tungsk said. “It died.”  
  
Ikram’s mouth dropped open as he tried to process. “But you said…it wasn’t…”  
  
“It’s not,” Tungsk said. “Not anymore. The elves left, and its icon glowed, and it sat back up gasping and spitting blood. I watched it for a while, as it gained its bearings. It covered its face with bloody hands. When I finally approached, it signed to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over.”  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
“I blindfolded it and brought it back.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
Tungsk gestured behind Ikram, to the door of the outhouse, barred by a wide board. Ikram reached for the board, and Tungsk caught his arm. Purple phantoms raced around the tunnel. “We don’t know if that’s really Minudz,” Tungsk said. “It could still be controlled. You need to be careful.”  
  
“Careful?” Ikram growled. “Do you know how scared it must be? You took it, and it got stabbed. Then you tie it up, blindfold it, walk it across the Afterlands just to toss it in an outhouse? You mistreated it.”  
  
“It’s a vessel.”  
  
“It’s a person!” Ikram shouted. Too loud.  
  
Tungsk backhanded Ikram across the cheek, wordless and furious.  
  
Ikram stumbled to the door, shoved his way through, and shouldered the door shut. He engaged the broad wooden lock and clenched his jaw as he breathed in the stagnant outhouse air. Piss and sod and sawdust. He ignored the banging on the inner door. Tungsk could punish him later.  
  
The human sat curled near the door to the outside. The front of its furs was slashed through and coated in day-old blood. Deerskin covered its eyes, and its hands were pinned behind its back.  
  
“Minudz?”  
  
The human perked. Its back straightened, and its teeth bared in that same wide, trusting smile as when Ikram first caught it following. Its lips formed his name: Ikram.  
  
Ikram pulled off the blindfold and loosened the furs around its neck, then untied the rope’s knots. They’d tightened over the days of walking, pressing twine splinters into the human’s soft skin.  
  
Once its hands were free, Minudz flung its arms around Ikram. His first impulse was to grasp for a blade. But his belt was gone, his weapons with it, so his hands tentatively returned empty to the human’s back. A sigh escaped him.  
  
The outhouse air reeked. And maybe Minudz too, but that didn’t stop Ikram from burying his face in the human’s neck and breathing deep.  
  
_Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine,_ Ikram’s mind insisted. The moon laughed from the wall, shrill but distant. He didn’t care what she thought, not while this human held him. Ikram gripped Minudz by the shoulders. “I’d fight the moon for you.”  
  
Minudz pushed back, brows furrowed. “What?” it signed.  
  
The word made sense now, kismet. A kismet smelled like shit and felt like fighting the moon. A kismet was brown eyes and ground coffee and going mad. A kismet was this.  
  
He signed, “Tell me what happened.”  
  
The human’s eyes lowered. “They made me attack Tungsk. They made me kill that man. They made me stab myself.”  
  
“How?”  
  
“I don’t know,” it signed. “They call themselves kings. They come into my head and make me do terrible things. I thought I would be safe here. They can’t possess you.”  
  
Ikram knocked his head. A well-known adage: “Orc skulls are thick.”  
  
The human snorted.  
  
“They’ve done this before?”  
  
“I listened this time,” it said. “The kings want to kill everyone on this mountain. They sent those elves.”  
  
“Why would they kill this mountain?”  
  
The human shrugged. “I don’t know.”  
  
Ikram stripped off his furs and offered them forward. Chill brushed his arms. The human took the too-large coat of stitched bearskin and slipped out of its bloodied furs. Sawdust muted Ikram’s thoughts, as Minudz fluffed its brown hair and pulled on Ikram’s coat.  
  
“Still warm,” Minudz signed.  
  
Tungsk’s words echoed in his head: _it cut the elf’s throat with my sword._ Ikram asked, “How many are left in the raiding party?”  
  
The human squinted suspiciously, half-drowned by ursine fur. “Fifteen. Why?”  
  
Ikram counted on his fingers: Lente, Kikrett, Hamma, Yekkan, Tungsk, himself, and one puny human. “Two to one. But we have the high ground.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” the human signed.  
  
Ikram ruffled its soft hair, then stood. “We’re going to restart the fires.”  
  
_We’re going to fight the moon._  
  
# 


	9. Ambush

Ikram entered the den from the outhouse tunnel, alone. Tungsk stood. Blankets were wrapped around the old man’s shoulders, for warmth in the chilly den. Ikram found his stolen weapons belt near the wide wooden table and buckled the sturdy leather back on. Hamma watched with wide eyes, and Ikram caught his gaze.  
  
"I'm done eating beans," Ikram told him. "Make coffee."  
  
Hamma’s mouth opened and shut. "We don't have fires."  
  
“Ikram,” Tungsk said. “We need to discuss the human.”  
  
Yekkan and Kikrett stared, intrusive. Ikram snapped, and double-pointed to the front portal, where they were supposed to be watching for elves. Not eavesdropping. Nosy nymphs.  
  
They turned back quickly.  
  
"My human, old man. Mine." Ikram passed Tungsk and opened the den armory. Spears, swords, shields, and other weapons nearly toppled on him.  
  
"What are you doing?" Yekkan asked.  
  
Ikram pulled out spears and handed them to Yekkan. "We're going to fight."  
  
"The moon?" Kikrett asked.  
  
"If she comes, then we’ll fight her too."  
  
"You've gone sleep mad," Kikrett said. Ikram pulled out more spears, until he reached the chest of atrocity knives. He grabbed its handle and pulled it across the hard-packed dirt.  
  
"Do you have to kill Minudz?" Yekkan asked.  
  
Ikram cut his eyes to Yekkan, obscured by two dozen spears. "No," he said. "The elves. We're going to set the fires, make coffee, and lure them here. Then we kill them."  
  
Tungsk grunted. "Our entire clan will die. Your human will too."  
  
Ikram shook his head. "They only have fifteen left."  
  
"Fifteen _elven_ raiders."  
  
"We have the advantage." Ikram weighed atrocity knives in his hands and attached them with fragile cords to his belt. "They'll come to our territory."  
  
Tungsk and Yekkan looked at each other, with raised brows and doubt.  
  
Ikram ran his thumb along the edge of an atrocity knife. Too dull. "We will present our Chieftess with thirty pointed ears. We'll carve our names into the mountainside forever. Generations will know us."  
  
Yekkan was the first to grin, his tusks protruding from his lips and a mad gleam in his eyes. The moon hid there, in his dark green irises. "We lay traps."  
  
Ikram double-pointed to him, eyes alight.  
  
"You're both crazy," Kikrett said.  
  
"Their shamans die first," Yekkan said. "The clerics and wizards, so our damage sticks."  
  
Ikram found a sharpening stone in the armory, and a wicked grin on his face. "Shamans are my specialty."  
  
"Someone has to man the fire." Kikrett counted. "Five vs fifteen. We’re going to die."  
  
Tungsk slapped Kikrett's back and pulled him from his spot. "Everyone dies, skinny. Lente, the shovels. We dig until dawn, and then we make the coffee."  
  
Lente hummed as he slung three wide spades over his shoulder.  
  
Ikram took the position at the front portal and sharpened a spear as Kikrett, Lente, and Tungsk took shovels outside to start pits. Yekkan took a sharpening stone to the rear portal, where he and Hamma discussed what to put in the traps.  
  
The sun moved over the sky, but even after sunset the moon hid. Ikram sharpened and shoveled, visiting the human in the outhouse after every shift at the spade.  
  
“It’s too quiet here,” Minudz signed.  
  
So Ikram hummed whatever work song was stuck in his head, as he sat by Minudz. He rested his arms until someone called him back, usually Tungsk.  
  
Night hit as the denwatchers tied and hid rope traps, buried poisoned nails, and laid warning trip wire. The moon still hid behind the clouds and mountain, and every time Ikram exited, he brandished knives at the sky. The clouds thinned near dawn, and a sliver of moon finally peered over the mountain's crest.  
  
"Now or never, is it?"  
  
The moon didn't answer.  
  
"Coward," Ikram accused.  
  
He returned to the den near dawn. For coffee.  
  
For twenty-four hours, the denwatchers dressed in furs and perched in trees. Hamma tended roaring fires inside and watched the front portal as Kikrett watched the back.  
  
Ikram nursed his coffee and chewed on jerky as he scanned the woods. The steady, yellow-gray smoke wafted into the pastel winter sky, a plume that snaked upward. By now, anyone on the mountain could see.  
  
Every deer and hawk and squirrel caught Ikram’s attention, jolting him, and still he waited. _Surprise is our best advantage,_ Tungsk had said. _If you waste it on a deer, I will skin you in the afterlife._  
  
He thought the first elf was an owl, it was so quiet. It stepped over leaves without making a sound, taking nothing from the morning silence. Ikram searched for more. Three, near him.  
  
The closest elf moved slowly toward the smoke, its bow raised. Not a shaman. Elven archers were dangerous too, their range long and their aim deadly, but the best chance of den survival required killing the healers first. So Ikram let the archer walk past.  
  
He let six elves pass before the healer approached. She held a staff, and her icon hung at the narrowing of her waist from a long chain. A heavy cloak wrapped poorly about her shoulders showed the loose, fine cloth of her dress. Ikram held his atrocity knife, loose and ready. He'd wait until he could see the individual hairs on her head. He had one shot.  
  
She stopped short, and Ikram didn't breathe. He heard nothing, saw nothing that might have stopped her. Had someone moved too early? Had someone attacked a wizard, or a second healer?  
  
His fingers gripped the handle, and the moon whispered from over the mountain crest.  
  
_Did you miss me?_  
  
Ikram kept his eyes on the elf shaman. Two steps closer. Please.  
  
_Will you still fight me?_  
  
Ikram glanced to the bright crescent over the mountains.  
  
_I could show her, you know. One little bird, and she looks up, and your entire clan dies._  
  
Ikram signed left-handed, "What do you want?"  
  
_Fight me,_ the moon said. _Fight me, or I tell the Ald-kin._  
  
"Fine. I'll fight you. I'll kill you after I kill her," Ikram half-signed, but he was pretty sure the moon got the point.  
  
Because the elf stepped forward.  
  
The knife flew from his hands, straight, and plunged into her neck. Ikram dropped to the ground, second weapon in hand, and severed her icon from its chain. He twisted the blade in her throat, spilling her lifeblood all over the thin clay and dry grasses.  
  
An arrow plunged into his shoulder. His left arm spasmed, the arrowhead scraping against bone. The archer cried out in elvish, a string of loose vowels and soft syllables. Ikram turned as the elf healer died underneath him. The archer reloaded, and another raised its bow toward him.  
  
Ikram threw his second knife, and it sunk into the archer’s hide armor.  
  
_Down,_ the moon said.  
  
Ikram dropped. A second archer’s arrow skimmed the top of his head. Cold air hit his skull as blood leaked over his hair.  
  
Another elf scream was cut short as Yekkan—covered in leaves and mud—sliced the second archer’s throat. Ikram tried to stand. His knee slipped in the healer's blood. He caught himself with his left arm, and fresh fire ripped through his nerves from the arrowhead.  
  
The shaft loosened, and Ikram ripped the arrow from his own meat and plunged it into the belly of the dead shaman. His right fingers snapped the cord of another atrocity knife.  
  
Leaves rustled, and another elf cried out. Lente's wild giggle lit the surrounding area, and he started a chant. “Fight! Kill! Die! _Fight! Kill! Die!_ ”  
  
That boy would be good in a warparty.  
  
"Ikram, wizard!" Tungsk called. Ikram bounded to his feet and bolted eastward. Another arrow lodged in the thick furs on his back but pinched little.  
  
The elves shouted, in their strange garbled language, and Ikram ignored it to sniff the air. The wizard's magic smelled like bursts of magnetism—tinny and pulsing. Ikram took a long leap over a pit trap, dodged left of the tripwire for a burst of darts, and barreled into the wizard. It kept upright and its hands shot up, pointed at Ikram as it shouted a foreign warning.  
  
“Idiot. I don’t speak elvish.” Ikram lunged and sliced with his knife, aiming for the wizard's fingers and neck. Missed.  
  
"That was Westish." Tungsk breathed hard as he took cover behind a wide pine. Archers fired in his direction.  
  
"Oh." Ikram’s slippery, messy hand grabbed the wizard’s. Dim lightning coursed over Ikram’s skin, cascading toward his feet. The hairs on his neck and arms stood. Ikram turned their bodies, so that the elf wizard stood between him and the archers.  
  
His atrocity knife severed the wizard's electric fingers. Mangled digits fell to the ground. Ikram held the wizard by the throat, turned to face the archers, and whispered broken Westish in the elf's ear.  
  
"<Don't speak much Westish.>" Ikram pressed the blade into the wizard’s soft skin, drawing a trickle of blood. "<Do you understand?>" he asked.  
  
The wizard mewled toward the archers. They paused their firing.  
  
"Tell them to leave this mountain," Tungsk said.  
  
Ikram rolled his eyes. "You tell them. You're the one who speaks Westish."  
  
Tungsk let words roll out of his mouth. Ikram recognized more than a few, <mountain> and <orcs> and <den> and <leave>.  
  
And <please>.  
  
Ikram grumbled. "Why are you saying <please>? They've already slaughtered two dens. During _slumber._ Cowards." The wizard flinched as spittle hit his ear.  
  
An elven archer asked, "<What did he say?>"  
  
"<He called you a coward for slaughtering our people while they sleep,>" Tungsk answered. Ikram understood and grimaced. Maybe he'd learned more Westish than he realized.  
  
The archers muttered to themselves, and Tungsk shook his head.  
  
"They're talking in elvish," Tungsk said. "Probably a counter attack. Prepare."  
  
Ikram pulled the wizard back a step. He caught a glimpse of Yekkan through the woods.  
  
Yekkan held up three fingers.  
  
Then Two.  
  
One.  
  
Ikram shoved the wizard forward and side-stepped behind the closest oak. The wizard sputtered and wailed. Arrows hit the bark. Ikram hurled the knife at the leftmost archer and sliced his collarbone, half in the chainmail.  
  
Yekkan fired arrows in quick succession, as did the elven archer. Ikram hurled another knife and caught the middle archer at the base of his neck. Long, silken hair fell, severed.  
  
Three elves slumped dead. Yekkan had three arrows in his torso and shoulder, nonfatal.  
  
"Eleven here," Tungsk said. "We're missing four."  
  
"Did you count this one?" Ikram nudged the wizard with his foot. It still whimpered.  
  
Tungsk nodded. Yekkan fussed with his wounds, inspecting the damage.  
  
Lente added, "At least we're even now. Four on four." He chuckled, readying another arrow from his belted quiver.  
  
Yekkan and Tungsk paused. "Or four on two," Yekkan said.  
  
And Ikram understood. Two—Kikrett and Hamma. And their sleeping den, prone.  
  
“Oh shit!” Lente took off.  
  
They ran. Yekkan trailed with a slight limp. The clearing in front of the den was free, unmolested. The pits were still covered. Lente and Tungsk stopped at the edge of the forest, scanning for the remaining raiders.  
  
"Where would they be?" Yekkan asked.  
  
"Maybe scared off?" Lente suggested. "Aren't elves notoriously cowardly about protecting their super-long lives?"  
  
Tungsk's eyes caught Ikram's, wide and green and worried, with wrinkles spreading outward like a starburst. “Four on one.”  
  
And suddenly, Ikram knew where the last four raiders were.  
  
His feet worked faster than his hands, as he raced toward the outhouse.

#


	10. Outhouse

The outhouse’s external door, lodged open, had one elf archer stationed outside. Ikram approached, guilt sloshing in his head. He’d left his human defenseless, unarmed against raiders. They'd slaughter it, then travel the tunnel and slaughter every orc in the den. Kikrett and Hamma would never see it coming. Djakka, Kren, and Blixtek would be dead in minutes. His vicious sisters would be snuffed with no chance to bare their tusks. Were they dead already?  
  
Could they even dig enough graves?  
  
Ikram sidled along the edge of the round hovel, and he tried to stop his breathing. Elves could hear anything with those damn ears. Yekkan shouted near the front of the den with Lente, pounded on the front door. The elf's ears perked that direction.  
  
Ikram reached his working arm around the open door and snatched the elf down by its hair. It hit the ground with a cry and fumbled to dislodge Ikram's hands. Failing.  
  
Ikram stomped on the elf's frail neck, over and over, and drew the last atrocity knife on his right side. His left arm hung, still slowly dripping blood. One elf dead. Three raiders left.  
  
This was a suicide mission, three elves versus a single moon-crazed orc, with blood dripping from his skull and only one working arm.  
  
He heard Tungsk call from outside, "Wait!"  
  
But Ikram stepped into the outhouse anyway. “Fight me,” he demanded. His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. His brandished blade glinted.  
  
An arrow pinned his wrist to the wall.  
  
“Oh.” Ikram breathed out.  
  
Three elves stood in the outhouse, willowy, with delicate armor and filigree. The archer, by the outhouse pit, lowered her bow. Her nostrils curled upward. The second archer watched from near sawdust pile with a loaded bow and nervous eyes. The third raider, a silver-plated swordsman, moved toward Ikram.  
  
Behind the silver swordsman, the door to the tunnel was still closed. Minudz stood there, with its feet planted and arms spread wide. Alive.  
  
"Minudz," Ikram whispered. _Not dead._ Its brown eyes locked on his, and its mouth opened. Silently, as always.  
  
The swordsman snapped his fingers in Ikram’s face. He pointed, single-fingered, to the human and slurred out accusatory Westish at Ikram.  
  
"<I don't speak much Westish,>" Ikram said. "<Slowly, please.>"  
  
The swordsman blinked. Ikram's wrist throbbed.  
  
"<Why is this vessel here?>" the swordsman asked.  
  
Ikram rolled his tongue around his mouth, trying to find the words. "<It is a person.>"  
  
"<Why is it here?>"  
  
"<Do you think the Kings are listening now?>" the second archer said.  
  
"<Best to assume they are always listening,>" the first archer said.  
  
"<That's how the orcs knew we were coming.>" The swordsman looked to Ikram. "<Isn't it, Orc?>"  
  
Ikram nodded. He often nodded when Kren asked questions.  
  
"<The Kings betrayed us,>" the first archer said. "<They send us to clear this mountain of orcs, and then they warn the inhabitants of our coming. Using the same vessel! Duplicitous bastards. We should never have taken their bait.>"  
  
"<Careful.>" The second archer’s eyes cut toward the human.  
  
The lavender eyes of the first archer flashed. "<War is their game,>" she said.  
  
The swordsman touched the pommel of his silver sword. "<The orcs? Or the Kings?>"  
  
The first archer pointed to the ground. "<The Kings play at war, and we are their fodder. I say we leave this cursed mountain.>"  
  
The swordsman addressed Ikram. "<Tell me, Orc. Is the battle over outside?>"  
  
Ikram nodded again. _How could something be over the outside?_ He hated Westish.  
  
"<We lost?>"  
  
Angry, the first archer stepped forward. Her boots slipped in wet sawdust, stopped by a word from the swordsman. The second archer stiffened, then returned his arrow to quiver behind his black hair. They muttered in elvish, with their slimy vowels and slick consonants. Ikram wanted to wash out his ears. He tested his wrist, but the arrow shaft was stuck deep into the clay wall. He could twitch his left hand at least.  
  
Oh, how he wished he could aim left-handed. He still had a knife there, dangling and useless.  
  
"A little help, please," Ikram muttered to the moon.  
  
The moon stayed silent. Ikram thought some rude words at the big yellow orb as he flexed the joints in his left hand.  
  
The swordsman gestured to Ikram, to the human, and slung his slippery words through the air. The first archer loaded her bow again. The other archer unsheathed a dagger and stalked toward Ikram with aloof pale gray eyes.  
  
The straight blade inched closer to Ikram's throat. His fingers twitched, his shoulder aflame as he reached for a left-handed atrocity knife. Too slow. He'd be too slow.  
  
The human wailed. A breathy screech echoed in the small room, shrill and raw, and pierced something deep inside Ikram. Minudz leapt on the second archer, and its flat, inefficient teeth sank into his slender neck. The gray-eyed elf cried out as Minudz wrenched on his hair and bit down.  
  
The first archer dropped her bow and plunged her arrow into the human’s back, but Minudz didn't loosen. She ripped the blood-covered arrow out and stabbed again. Human blood misted in the air. "<Vessel won’t rutting die!>" she said.  
  
The swordsman plunged his blade through Minudz’ ribs.  
  
Adrenaline shot through Ikram's veins. His left arm pitched forward, snapping the cord in one motion. The atrocity knife gouged into the first archer’s jugular, skimmed upward, and caught on the point of her jaw. Her lavender eyes widened. Her hands left the arrow and moved to clutch her neck as she collapsed. Sawdust sopped her blood.  
  
Cold fire pierced Ikram’s abdomen. The second archer’s dagger plunged there, in his diaphragm. Blood seeped onto Ikram’s furs as his muscles tore. His ears muffled. His eyes glazed.  
  
Ikram pitched forward. The second archer struggled against the weight. The elf smelled like sweat and hide, and Ikram couldn't help but think orcs didn't smell so different.  
  
The swordsman shoved Ikram sideways, freeing the second archer. The thwack of the outhouse floor barely registered against the overwhelming pain in Ikram’s chest. The archer unclasped the gasping human's limbs from around his neck and waist. Minudz landed on Ikram's stomach, and fresh agony lit him up. His abdomen clenched, nauseous. He breathed out air and couldn't get more back in. Every breath tightened his chest. Minudz’ soft hair flopped, covering its eyes, as the elven arrow protruded like an obelisk from its back.  
  
"<Don't move.>" Westish. Tungsk's voice.  
  
The swordsman said, "<You'd watch your man die?>" The point of his sword hovered over Ikram’s eyes, blurry.  
  
"<Yes. A thousand times, to save my home,>" Tungsk said. "<Take your wounded. Leave my mountain.>"  
  
Ikram recited, "Fight. Kill. Die." The words were small, wheezing.  
  
The human's hands barely twitched, curling slowly. Ikram tried to reach for its hand, but his arms wouldn’t move.  
  
"<You'd just let us go?>"  
  
"<We know you were sent,>" Tungsk said. "<And your forces are no longer a threat. Leave or be killed.>"  
  
The swordsman sheathed his weapon and pulled up his hood. He took the wounded archer and left the outhouse. Ikram wanted to throw a knife, but even if his arms would move, he couldn’t aim. Darkness lined the edges of his vision.  
  
“Make sure they don’t get far,” Tungsk said, to someone, then he left too.  
  
Inside the outhouse was quiet, with Tungsk and the two surviving elves gone. Only his own rasping breath filled his muffled ears, as his torso screamed and he bled-bled-bled. The darkness spread.  
  
_You said you'd fight me,_ the moon said.  
  
"Come down, coward," Ikram whispered. His fingers stretched toward the human’s stilled hand but couldn’t reach that far.  
  
He fought against the darkness as it stole him away. 

#


	11. Moonlight

In the darkness, the half-waned moon laughed. Ikram stood with a tree-length sword on the peak of a dark, bare mountain. Why a sword? He’d never been a swordsman. And, he thought, wasn’t he busy dying?  
  
_Finally,_ the moon said, _it took you long enough._  
  
"Where am I?" Ikram asked.  
  
_My arena._  
  
Ikram looked around with warped senses. He could see across mountains, hear across the world, and smell only fog. Djakka was on the next mountain over, bare-chested and scarred. His hand clenched as he faced the too-close moon. An elephant-sized pick-axe was half-buried in the magenta rocks behind Djakka. On the next mountaintop, Kren and his crimson hair glowed with arcane fire. Blixtek stood across from Ikram, while Yekkan and Lente topped spiny peaks to his right. They surrounded the moon, on a circle of six mountains, with too-large weapons.  
  
"Why are we here?" Ikram shouted.  
  
_To fight me._  
  
"Why would we fight you?"  
  
_Because I have what you need._  
  
The moon flashed with a sunburst and cried a red tear. Suspended liquid hardened to pearlescent stone. Ikram took one unintentional step forward, and the red-tinged sphere dropped as though cut from a string, between the six tall peaks and into an abyss below.  
  
He stared into the darkness where the moon’s tear had fallen. Where was this?  
  
The abyss called him to follow.  
  
Icy fire rushed through Ikram, banishing the darkness from his eyes in a rushing instant. He gasped fruitlessly, still unable to breathe. Someone was dragging him from the outhouse by the feet. The pastel sky hung above, so different from the foggy place. The outhouse’s smell of excrement and old sawdust was replaced by fresh cold air he could taste but not inhale.  
  
Lente had the human draped over his shoulder. Its arms swung limply, the elven arrow still an obelisk from its back.  
  
Tungsk dropped Ikram’s feet and knelt. "You're alive," he said with surprise. "You're awake."  
  
Ikram opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He scratched at his throat, trying to get out whatever blocked it. His hands were mitts, fumbling.  
  
Tungsk sliced through Ikram’s furs with an atrocity knife. The air froze on Ikram’s bare stomach. Pink gore formed a line where the elf's straight knife had collapsed him. Tungsk prodded the wound, and lightning sparked behind Ikram's eyes.  
  
"False lung," Tungsk said. "This is going to hurt."  
  
Tungsk’s knife slipped between Ikram’s ribs. Blood bubbled and burst, deep maroon on his green skin. Fluid seeped into his furs, and Tungsk pressed down on his chest.  
  
A weak-willed wail cut through the air, torn unbidden from his throat, and Ikram hoped that was not how he would be remembered. Ikram Fallow: Survived the elves, cried to death.  
  
He breathed hard and fast, and realized he could _breathe._ Tungsk left the knife, stuck out of him, and Ikram waited to die while looking at the sky. No moon. Coward.  
  
His eyes blinked slow. The moon’s smile lived behind his lids.  
  
"Lente, don't let him sleep," Tungsk said.  
  
"We can handle the rest of slumber without him," Lente said. "Elderwalk is only a few weeks away."  
  
Tungsk double-pointed. "He sleeps; he dies."  
  
Tungsk jogged off. Lente bent to peer into Ikram's eyes. The human’s limp body still hung over Lente’s shoulder.  
  
"If you die, what do you want me to do with Minudz?" Lente asked.  
  
Ikram breathed. Sweet, fresh air, even as pain shot through him and his own blood burbled around the knife. Lente wouldn't stay in focus. "Is it dead?"  
  
“Not quite.” Lente shrugged and jostled the human. "Tungsk won't let me take out the arrow, but he says I can have the arrowhead after. You want me to bury it with you?"  
  
"Send it with Kren. To help Djakka."  
  
"What's Djakka doing anyway?"  
  
Ikram wheezed. "I don't know." Djakka and Kren had muttered low and secretive over the fires last year, so Shaman Hatk and the party couldn’t hear. Even when they neared the city of Orksport, and Djakka met with a brutish fogpriest from across the strait, Ikram was never privy.  
  
"What do you mean, ‘you don't know?’ You were in his warparty."  
  
"He didn't tell us."  
  
"And you still followed him?" Lente asked.  
  
Ikram's eyelids drooped; his vision shrank toward the middle of the pale sky. Fresh fire shot through his left shoulder. His eyes flung open to see Lente pressing a knuckle into his arrow wound. The finger came back bloody.  
  
"What's that sod about the moon?"  
  
Ikram blinked enough times to summon butterflies. "She wants to fight."  
  
"You can't fight the moon," Lente said. "That's stupid."  
  
"Tell her that."  
  
"So, what do you want me to do with the human if you’re drooling sleep-mad."  
  
"If I'm alive, Minudz stays with me," Ikram said. "It's mine."  
  
"You really do have a kismet with it. I thought that was just one way. Unrequited."  
  
Ikram's nostrils flared. "Rut you."  
  
"No thanks." Lente grinned and tapped Ikram's cheek. "You smell like human, I bet."  
  
"Don't tell the others."  
  
"You haven’t exactly been hiding it," Lente said. "Besides, they know already. We all do. They saw visions on Mad Moon, little half-orcs, practically running the village."  
  
Ikram tried to bolt up. The knife bubbled blood and pinched so hard he blacked out for a half-second. The pale sky returned. "What?!"  
  
"You see, when an orc and a human have a kismet, they rut together, and then… Pop! Creepy, pink-tinted halfies."  
  
_Halfies?_  
  
"I’ve heard humans will procreate with everything. They can make half-ogres, half-elves, half-halflings... Bet they’d rut wyrms if they could figure out how."  
  
"Halfies?"  
  
"You can’t be Kren’s friend if you’re this dumb. Come on. Everyone knows if you’re rutting a human—”  
  
"I'm not rutting it!" Ikram insisted.  
  
"Sure you're not."  
  
"I'm serious. I never—I don't even know—" If Ikram had any blood left in his body, and he wasn't certain he did, his ears must have turned bright red. Was Minudz listening, draped over Lente’s shoulder? How much could it understand?  
  
"Well you're gonna need to get on if you expect half-orcs before next winter."  
  
"I—" Ikram wanted to punch Lente right in his stupid face, but he couldn’t move his arms. "When would I have—?"  
  
"In the outhouse, like Kikrett and Hamma." Lente shrugged.  
  
Ikram laid his head back so he wouldn’t blush harder and pass all the way out. Maybe death would be better than having this conversation. Especially if the other denwatchers told Djakka. Or Blixtek.  
  
Or his sisters.  
  
"Is he dead?" Tungsk called from afar.  
  
"Maybe," Lente said. "I told him about the half-orcs and he's turning red as a pumpkin." Tungsk arrived with bandages and waking powder.  
  
"Pumpkins aren't red." Yekkan followed with two linked sticks for a gurney.  
  
Ikram took in pain-tinged laborious breaths as the edges of his vision sparkled. Darkness was so close. "I'm not rutting the human."  
  
"Sure," Yekkan said.  
  
"I swear on Garden soil; I'm not rutting the human."  
  
Lente grinned. "Someone has to. I'll start a bid."  
  
Ikram's hand bulleted upward. His shoulder pinched through the arrow-bite as his fingers clenched around Lente's neck. He squeezed, eyes focused on Lente’s gasping mouth. Lente stumbled. The human fell off Lente’s shoulder and rolled onto its side. Too pale. Ashen.  
  
Tungsk pushed Ikram's shoulders down. "I said keep him awake, not send him into a murder frenzy," Tungsk said. He bound Ikram's wrist to the crooked sticks of the gurney. "Ikram, the half-orcs could have come from anywhere. Piccup root doesn’t tell us everything."  
  
"Right," Lente muttered. "Maybe it rutted your sisters."  
  
Ikram reached with his right hand toward Minudz’s still form. The human was close, but Ikram’s fingers flopped, the arrow hole still a divot in his wrist. Its stone icon lay near its head, pulsing dimly.  
  
The icon glowed yellow, then snuffed.  
  
"It's hurt," Ikram said. "Fix it." He coughed. Blood spattered into the nearby dirt, as roots of pain tugged hard at his ribs. "Fix—"  
  
“It’s not breathing,” Lente croaked. “Humans have to breathe, right?”  
  
Yekkan poured waking salts onto his knuckles and knelt next to Minudz. Ikram’s heart pounded. He strained, but he could do nothing.  
  
Tungsk put a hand out. Yekkan and Lente paused. Ikram breathed, like Minudz didn’t.  
  
“Fix it!”  
  
“You can’t fix death, stupid,” Lente said.  
  
“I’m sorry, Ikram,” Yekkan said.  
  
_Dead?_ Ikram clawed the ground with weak fingers, trying to push his way toward Minudz. _It can’t be dead._ He watched Minudz’ slack face, willing it to move, willing it to breathe.  
  
But it didn’t. Its eyes were unfocused, open, like a slaughtered cow.  
  
Tungsk grabbed Ikram’s shoulders. “Be still, child.”  
  
How could he stay still when the world spun like this? The Garden gave and the Garden took, and there was no other way to survive than to always move. To be still was death.  
  
And Minudz was still.  
  
Ikram closed his eyes, and Yekkan put salts to his nostrils. Ammonia bit his sinuses, his throat and his eyes wrenched open. His eyes caught on Yekkan, accusatory and reddened.  
  
“You have to stay awake,” Tungsk said. “I know it is hard.”  
  
“I don’t want to.” _Not if Minudz is dead._  
  
“Too bad,” Lente said. “You’re going to live whether you like it or not.”  
  
“Be patient.” Tungsk dressed his shoulder wound with hemp and twine, while Ikram stared at the sky. “No one knows the future.”  
  
Ikram knew his. “Bury me next to Minudz.” They would fertilize the Garden together.  
  
Tungsk smacked Ikram’s cheek. “Idiot child. Watch.” He pointed to the stone in the dirt, the icon. It glowed, like the tiniest of suns or the brightest of stars.  
  
Dead brown eyes filled with yellow light, and a ripple of gold passed over its skin. Minudz reeled and gasped, its chest arched off the ground. Lente cussed with elvish sounds as he scrambled away. Yekkan fell backward, landing hard. His bow snapped under his weight.  
  
_Minudz._ Ikram’s heartbeat sprang up. _Its god brought it back._  
  
The human slumped, and the arrowhead dropped, pressed from its flesh into the dead grasses.  
  
"Where did you learn elvish?" Tungsk asked Lente. Ikram's eyes were still fixed on the human, past the tips of his mostly useless fingers. Minudz looked up at him, its sod-brown eyes exhausted, then away.  
  
Lente waddled on his knees back to the human and plucked the polished steel arrowhead from the dirt. "Couple of the raiders said it. Sounds fierce. What's it mean?"  
  
Tungsk frowned. "I haven't heard that one translated before." He returned to putting Ikram on the gurney. "Lente, check if Minudz is breathing. Yekkan?"  
  
Yekkan stared at his broken bow. "My grandfather gave this to me."  
  
"Then it was old. We'll fetch an elvish bow from one of the corpses. Get the feet." Tungsk gestured to Ikram's useless legs. Yekkan and Tungsk moved Ikram onto the sticks and plucked him off the ground. Soon, the warmth of the den hit his face like a thousand needles, siphoning heat into his pores. The tips of his ears felt alive for the first time in days.  
  
They lay him in the human’s bed of blankets and furs. Hamma sat watch. When Ikram’s eyelids drooped, waking salts on the back of Hamma’s finger called him back to life. He breathed hard, his chest pinching with every draw and exhale. Tungsk drove a spike into the clay wall near Ikram and chained the human there. _For comfort,_ he said. But how was a chain comfortable?  
  
A week passed, and no elves came. Yekken left to inform the sister clans.  
  
The nearby fire crackled with new sticks, while Lente and Kikrett threw darts at one of Ikram’s moons. Minudz slept mostly, its back pressed to Ikram’s arm. _Healing,_ Tungsk said. _Humans use sleep to heal._ But it wouldn’t sign to Ikram, even when its brown eyes opened. Not to him, not to Tungsk, no one.  
  
Tungsk said, “A watcher’s game is patience, son.”  
  
“I thought that was Conquer,” Kikrett fire-whispered, a sod-eating grin on his face.  
  
Lente slapped his back, with a wide grin, and his dart landed dead center of Ikram’s sketch. “Conquer or Moon-opoly.”  
  
“Pin the tail on the bunny,” Kikrett added. His dart flew wide.  
  
Hamma sighed. “Guys, you’re not helping.”  
  
Kikrett shrugged. “We weren’t trying to.”  
  
#


	12. Hillside

A second week passed, and Minudz still did not speak. It sat beside Ikram, refusing to eat, refusing to sign. Its hand remained chained to the wall. Lente’s words still haunted Ikram: _I’ll start a bid._ When it went to the outhouse, bed-ridden Ikram insisted that Tungsk take it. No one else.  
  
"This is unnecessary," Tungsk said. "No one is going force themself on Minudz."  
  
"Did you see halfies on Mad Moon?" Visions under the influence of Piccup root held weight. If the watchers saw half-orcs before next winter, there would be half-orcs before next winter.  
  
"Has it even told you if it can reproduce? Some humans can’t.”  
  
Ikram repeated slower, "Did you see halfies on Mad Moon?"  
  
Tungsk's eyes cut to the side. He had, just like the others.  
  
"Take it."  
  
With patience, Tungsk informed him, "Only because it might become a vessel again."  
  
And Tungsk would unlock its chain with a fat iron key and escort it through the tunnel to the outhouse.  
  
Eventually, they removed the shunt from Ikram’s ribs. His wounds healed with knots and jagged scars. That should have made him proud, but every time he ran a finger over the new scars, his mind went to Minudz. It hadn't healed him. All that unneeded healing had annoyed Ikram so thoroughly at the beginning of winter, but now every scar was a reminder that Minudz hadn’t bothered. _Did it not care anymore?_  
  
Once Ikram could no longer slip into a sleeping death, the other denwatchers ignored him. Hamma tended the fires and coffee. Kikrett watched the front portal, Tungsk the rear. Ikram worked the knots on his right wrist while propped against the wall next to Minudz in its nest. Thanks to the medicines Tungsk made, the wounded hand was slowly regaining feeling. Perhaps in a month Ikram would be able to throw knives again. He wouldn't be much use to Djakka next war-season if he stayed numb.  
  
Minudz lay not sleeping, but half-buried in fur blankets and looking at an old moon drawing on the wall. It stared with wet eyes, smelling like defeat.  
  
Ikram took its hand, on impulse. Its mud brown eyes glanced at him.  
  
"Why are you sad?" Ikram half-signed.  
  
The human looked away. Minudz had been happier stuffed up in the outhouse than here, and Ikram couldn't understand why.  
  
Ikram stood on weakened legs and urged the human up. It resisted, refusing to leave its furs, its wrist still chained to the wall. Ikram grabbed the chain, pressed his foot to the wall, and wrenched the spike out of the clay. Cracks branched from the spot.  
  
The chain dropped to the ground. “Better?” Ikram asked.  
  
Minudz still refused to move.  
  
Ikram breathed heavily out his nose, grabbed Minudz underneath the shoulder, and pulled it to standing. His legs shook with the effort, knees weak and unprepared.  
  
He set the human by the door and wrapped a fur around it. With the hefty key, he unlocked the chain and hung them both in the re-packed armory near the front portal. “Better?” he asked.  
  
No answer, again.  
  
Kikrett watched from the portal. "Should Minudz be untied?"  
  
"We're going for a walk," Ikram said. "Fresh air and sunlight are good for humans."  
  
"It's night."  
  
Ikram waved his hands. "Moonlight then."  
  
"Is this another sleep-mad thing?" Kikrett asked.  
  
Ikram stared for a moment, as Kikrett’s words swam. He grunted, “Yes,” and shoved his shoulder against the heavy front entrance. Dry air whipped inward. The cold bit into the unaccustomed skin on his cheeks and ears. He dragged the human by the hand into the frigid night air. He closed the door, and the world was silent. “Better?” he whispered.  
  
Minudz’ eyes remained locked on the ground.  
  
Ikram scoured the dark sky. White smoke trailed upward across the mountain. Most sister tribes had restarted their fires. The moon was nearly full again, her wicked face a grin.  
  
_Are you coming to fight?_ she asked.  
  
Ikram took the human's wrist and led it toward the moon. They followed for two hours before the moon spoke again.  
  
_You didn't bring your weapons?_  
  
"I don't need weapons," Ikram signed, with sloppy right-hand movements.  
  
The moon laughed until she cried colorless stars. Eventually, she asked, _Who's that?_  
  
"This is my person."  
  
_I don't like it,_ the moon said.  
  
Ikram signed at the moon, "Yeah, well, I don't like you."  
  
"Who are you talking to?" the human signed, finally.  
  
_Finally! Minudz speaks!_ Eyes alight and grin wide, Ikram pointed to the moon.  
  
The human sighed and sat down by a skinny oak. It pulled its legs close and sank its head into its arms.  
  
"Why are you sitting? Why are you covering your face?" Ikram signed. The human wasn't looking, so he prodded its shoulder and asked again, out loud.  
  
"You're sleep mad." Its signs were small, defeated. "I can't heal that."  
  
"Is that why you've been sulking?"  
  
The human crossed its fist at him. A burble of laughter started in the pit of his stomach, but he pushed it back down. He finally understood why Blixtek always laughed. Something about Minudz making such a vulgar sign—one that said “never breed”—transcended beyond funny.  
  
The moon laughed too, but Ikram ignored her.  
  
He sat by the human and rummaged for a stick. Minudz watched as Ikram sketched the den, the fires, the forest. He filled the dirt around them with images of sleepy figures, of coffee kettles, of anything except blood and the moon.  
  
The human's head drooped forward with heavy eyelids. Ikram shook its shoulder. "Are you tired?" Ikram signed. "We could go back."  
  
"No."  
  
"You could leave."  
  
Mud brown eyes caught Ikram's, with eyebrows furrowed.  
  
_Yes,_ the moon said, _get rid of it. Then we'll fight._  
  
Ikram ignored the moon.  
  
"You could run away," Ikram said. "You wouldn't have to deal with the chain, the orcs, the jokes. Slumber will be over soon. The elders will wake. Leaving would be safer."  
  
Minudz leaned back and sighed. It signed, "I have died nine times. They have killed me nine times. Where I go doesn’t matter; nowhere is safe."  
  
"Who are they?" Ikram asked.  
  
The human shook its head. "Does it matter? You can't fight them, just like you can't fight the moon."  
  
_Coward,_ the moon said.  
  
Minudz stood, carefully stepping over the drawings. Ikram started to erase them, but Minudz caught his hand. "No," it signed. "Leave them. I want them to stay."  
  
Ikram dropped the stick and hopped over the drawings. The next sleetstorm would wash away the evidence anyway. The sun rose slowly as they walked.  
  
"I don't think I'm sleep-mad," Ikram said.  
  
Minudz raised its eyebrows, skeptical.  
  
"Maybe a little." Ikram shrugged. "But if I hadn't followed the moon, I'd never have seen the elves. We'd have been slaughtered."  
  
Walking slowly, Minudz signed, "But why would you have to fight the moon?"  
  
"Because she took something we need. Or she has something, that wasn’t clear."  
  
"We?"  
  
Ikram blushed and hoped the human wasn't watching his ears. "Not you and me. Djakka, and me, and Kren, Blixtek, Yekkan, and Lente."  
  
"But not me."  
  
"You weren't there," Ikram said.  
  
The human's lips pinched. "But I want to go with you," it signed.  
  
Djakka wouldn’t object. He’d insisted to the Chieftess that they needed Minudz for its healing prowess. Ikram frowned, a worry shadowing his face as Lente’s comments resurfaced. _Half-orcs, practically running the village._ Piccup root visions weren’t always _always_ right, were they? "Are you pregnant?" he asked.  
  
The human's face screwed into something unidentifiable. Its cheeks pinched up, its nose crinkled, its eyebrows scrunched, and its eyes shrank in a squint. "Excuse me?" it signed.  
  
"I just...the other denwatchers saw half-orcs in their Mad Moon visions."  
  
Minudz didn't lose its strange face. "I don't think you understand how that works."  
  
"I know the first part."  
  
A mischievous grin parted its lips. An eyebrow raised. "Do you?"  
  
Ikram's ears turned red. Minudz laughed noiselessly, its teeth showing.  
  
"Why are you so mean to me?" Ikram whined, his hands loose.  
  
"For humans, to ask someone if they're pregnant is extremely rude. Especially if you're not rutting them yet. What if I asked you if you were pregnant?"  
  
"That's different," he stammered, as his mind whirled. _Yet?_ Had Minudz said _yet?_  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because I...you know..." Tungsk hadn’t really taught him the signs.  
  
"And I don't?"  
  
Ikram's hands wavered, and his mouth dropped open.  
  
Minudz grinned at him. It enjoyed his discomfort. "See?" it signed. "You don't know. Even if you did know, if it’s part of me, it’s my business only. And that's why asking is rude."  
  
_Never mind,_ the moon interrupted, _maybe I do like the Olom-kin._  
  
Once he composed himself again, closing his mouth and pinching his ears back green, Ikram asked, "So the half-orcs were a false vision?"  
  
Minudz shrugged. " _I_ am definitely not pregnant. That is what you asked."  
  
"Maybe someone else is, then."  
  
Minudz tapped its stone absently as they continued. Leaves crunched from still-frozen dew under their feet. It dropped its hands and stopped walking on the hill as the den mound came into view, its white smoke diffusing into the night. Ikram turned back.  
  
“I shouldn’t go back,” it said. “I’m not safe.”  
  
Ikram stepped close and touched its chin. “No one will hurt you.” He’d kill anyone who tried. Even the moon.  
  
Minudz slowly pushed Ikram’s hands down. A gentle heartbeat lived under its warm, soft skin. “You know I’m a vessel. I’m not safe for the tribe.”  
  
"We're orcs, and you don't even carry a weapon. We can manage."  
  
The human shook its head. "You don't understand. The kings are ruthless, when they use me. I may not carry weapons, but you do."  
  
"Not now." His belt was empty.  
  
"Usually, you do. And everyone else does, even children. I can't be around them. Tungsk was right to chain me. He understands the risk."  
  
Ikram said, "You are not a risk."  
  
Minudz grabbed Ikram's wrist in a flash. Its thumb pressed hard into the knot of new scar tissue and wrenched him downward. Pain shot through his elbow and shoulder as Minudz pinned Ikram’s arm behind his back. On weak legs, Ikram hit the ground. His face pressed into cold leaves and hard soil.  
  
From this angle, Ikram didn’t have leverage to shove the human off, and Minudz foiled any attempts to turn. They breathed puffs of warm white fog into frozen air until Ikram gave up, relaxing into the hard ground.  
  
Minudz let up, kneeling. Ikram sat, then massaged his wrist and hand and arm as his thoughts blurred even further. Pale phantom moons eclipsed Minudz’ face, just for a moment.  
  
"Don't underestimate me," Minudz signed. “And don’t underestimate them.”  
  
Ikram wiped the phantom moons away, his fingers brushing across Minudz’ cheeks and forehead. He said, "I don't want you to leave." His arm dropped back down. His healing wounds stung slightly, still reeling from the sudden movement.  
  
Minudz watched Ikram closely, his eyes, his mouth. It reached forward.  
  
Ikram jerked back. Was it attacking again? With wariness, he pushed away its arms.  
  
Minudz eyebrows furrowed. It reached for his shoulder again, and Ikram blocked its hands. Minudz’ fingers, warm and smooth, clasped around his gently and pushed his hand aside. The knot on his wrist simmered as he pulled back away.  
  
"You already proved your point," Ikram said. "I’ll be careful."  
  
The human sat back on its heels. Confusion and frustration dappled its furrowed brows. It tapped its stone absently, then signed, "Hold still, please."  
  
Did it want to heal him? Minudz’ grapple hadn’t hurt much. "I don’t need a healspell for that."  
  
"I’m not."  
  
"Are you possessed again?"  
  
Minudz shook its head. Its head came close like the slowest headbutt. Its lips pressed against Ikram’s cheek, soft, insistent. What kind of attack was this? Poison? It smelled like sage and fur and something stronger.  
  
Pheromones?  
  
Oh. _Pheromones._  
  
_Gross,_ the moon complained. _Not out in the open._  
  
Minudz’ hands trailed up Ikram’s arms to his shoulders. Tingles lingered on those patches of skin, over his stomach, on his cheek. Ikram put his hands up again. Brown eyes stared back, as doubt lingered on Minudz’ sun-freckled face.  
  
Ikram asked, "Are you sure you’re not possessed?"  
  
Quick like a lynx, Minudz grabbed his hands, then leaned toward him. Ikram’s arms slithered around its torso, until he found his fingers nestled between the heavy furs of its back and its thin tunic, and their mouths together.  
  
The human tasted like jerky and pheromones and mint, like sweat and concern. And a little like coffee, but Ikram was almost sure that was his taste as he kissed back.  
  
_At least go underground again,_ the moon whined.  
  
A welcome bonus, that kissing the human annoyed the moon. Ikram grinned against Minudz’ mouth and his breath caught the human’s smell, sage and magic. _It stays with me,_ he thought. No one would take them apart, not his sisters, not Djakka, not the moon.  
  
Fluttering filled his stomach and spread over his limbs as the cold pricked his skin. The human’s hands slid to his neck, to stubble. _Mine,_ his mind whispered in time with his breaths. _Mine, mine, mine._ His heart beat like he was mid-battle, exhilarated and trying to burst out of his chest.  
  
Breathless, he pulled back and pressed his forehead into Minudz’ mud hair, grinning like a sleep-mad fool. The morning sun crested the hills, bathed them in soft light, and left the world glistening.  
  
So this was a kismet—a sparkling hillside and pissing off the moon.  
  
The moon and all her phantoms pouted as she descended behind the trees. _Mortals are the worst,_ she said.

#


	13. Watch's End

Three weeks before the end of slumber, Ikram accrued five piercings. With two wedges in each ear and a septum bolt, he always had something to fiddle with when his vision blurred.  
  
Yekkan slapped Ikram’s hands whenever he was close. “Not with your fingers.”  
  
Minudz signed, “It’s going to get infected.” Its stone started glowing, but simmered when Ikram gave the human angry looks. If Minudz healed his new piercings, wouldn’t the holes just shut to the metal bolts?  
  
At the changing of the month, a quick-winded blizzard dropped a finger’s depth of snow onto the frozen ground. Ikram wandered outside in the gray of late winter, dropped to his knees, and started packing the snow into fist-sized pellets while Lente and Kikrett made a puny army of snow-orcs. Their sculptures were squat things, thick legs and barrel chests, maybe more like dwarves than orcs.  
  
With frustrated hands on hips, Lente called out for help, "Ikky, you’re artistic. Help us."  
  
"Can’t." Ikram shook his head. His tip of his nose throbbed, his septum piercing. "Gotta make snowballs."  
  
Phantom moons slithered over the banks and mounds of icy white, and over the swaths of dead grass he’d unearthed. His piles grew like lumpy mountains. He spent hours on snowballs, an accidental meditative state as his breath turned to frost. The air wasn’t so cold, but the just-frozen powdery slush permeated his deerskin gloves and slowly worked at the nerves on his fingers. He could rest without sleeping, as his healing wrist ached into numbness too.  
  
Commotion tugged him from his reverie. The main door to the den rattled, but he continued snowballs. Lente and Kikrett waddled inward in heavy coats, and Ikram duck-walked to the next pile of snow.  
  
Ikram’s stomach growled. He held up the current snowball, imagined it a roasted pigeon, and bit in. Cold exploded on his teeth.  
  
_She used to eat the snow too,_ the moon whispered. Ikram’s ears twitched, although the moon’s voice never lived outside his head.  
  
"Can’t talk," Ikram muttered. He had to make snowballs.  
  
_Come fight me,_ the moon begged quietly.  
  
"When I’m done." Ikram looked up at the mountain, at the rising moon, at the white-covered branches of dormant trees. Millions of snowballs yet to be made, and his fingers were already numb. He tugged his septum ring.  
  
_You make excuses. ___  
  
He packed another ball of icy slush, then held it high on the palm of his splayed hand. It covered the moon and her ring of surrounding light in the early night. "Not excuses," he told the moon. "Snowballs."  
  
An elven arrow burst through his lifted snowball, spraying slush all over Ikram’s eyes and hair. He looked around. Were there more raiders? Wind whispered in the trees, dropping waterfalls of snow.  
  
He wasn’t prepared. Not enough snowballs yet.  
  
"Ikram!" Lente’s voice shouted. "Come inside. Now. And bring my fancy arrow."  
  
Did Minudz need him? Ikram stood, abandoned his latest lumpy mountain, and found the cerulean-fletched arrow. His legs wobbled as he jogged inside. With sopping gear, he treaded through the muddy entrance and checked the human’s pile of furs.  
  
The fat key lay by the open manacle, where Minudz should have been.  
  
Did it run away? “Where—”  
  
Lente stopped him. “Get your wet clothes off first. You’ll mildew the rugs.”  
  
Ikram followed orders, shucking his deerskin gloves and bear coat and the dress-like pants. He turned his boots upside down near other wet shoes. “Did Minudz escape?”  
  
Lente shook his head. “Though keeping it chained is pretty messed up, don’t you think? Especially since you’re—”  
  
Ikram growled. “Where is it?”  
  
“—friendly,” Lente finished. He tucked the arrow back in his foraged elven quiver, with colorful siblings. “It’s with Shaman Monten.”  
  
Ikram lumbered toward the quarantined shaman. Hamma sat on a nearby bench, beside Minudz, who clutched its pack of medicine. Shaman Monten breathed ragged, his pallor fading, his eyes open and searching even though he still slept.  
  
“What’s happening?” Ikram asked.  
  
“He’s dying,” Hamma said. “And, we thought, since you knew the Firestorm family, that you could make the decision.”  
  
Ikram blinked. What decision?  
  
The human started to sign rapidly. Ikram asked it to start over. Minudz signed slowly, “He has water-breath. My healing could fix him. He shouldn’t have to die.”  
  
“What does Tungsk say?”  
  
Hamma shook his head. “Tungsk won’t say.” The eldest denwatcher stared into the fire, stirring thick dregs of coffee into syrup.  
  
“What about Yekkan?” Ikram asked. Besides Tungsk, Yekkan had the most experience as a denwatcher.  
  
Hamma folded his arms across his belly. “Yekkan’s out hunting. Just left. He said we had to ask you. Because you know the High Shaman’s family.”  
  
Ikram pinched his lips. Knew his family? Ikram knew Hezzik and Kren, not the Shaman Monten. He’d grown up with this aloof shaman as his best friend’s father. “I don’t know him that well.”  
  
“You know him better than us,” Hamma said. “Yekkan said if you approved, Minudz could save Monten. And if you didn’t, we have to let him go to Garden.”  
  
Ikram covered his eyes. Let him _die_? The shaman’s raspy breathing labored, filling Ikram’s ears. Monten had driven Hezzik to leave the clan, and last spring he’d shorn off Kren’s beautiful hair. Monten had made Kren cry a hundred times, and Ikram too.  
  
But Monten was the High Shaman of the clan, not just the tribe. Shaman Monten Firestorm could pull thousand-yard flame from the sky and scour a forest to its bones. He could create fertile ash for crops and lay waste to enemy clans. The Chieftess would be beyond furious if Monten died.  
  
Would she kill Minudz for not saving the shaman?  
  
Ikram looked to Minudz, who met his gaze with soft, brown eyes. It wanted to heal. It wanted to preserve life. It wanted to prove itself useful.  
  
“Do it,” Ikram signed.  
  
Minudz scrambled off the bench with its pack and touched its stone. Bright, golden light lit the quarantine corner of the den, and poured in droves into the old shaman’s sweaty chest.  
  
“Are you sure?” Hamma asked.  
  
Ikram nodded. He said, “If I’ve made the wrong decision, I’ll kill him this spring.” His finger touched the handle of a knife, lightly. Color rushed back into the shaman’s face, as the human snatched out its pestle and plump seeds and a strange jar of iridescent beetles. It worked like mad, and Ikram wondered if the moon infected it too.  
  
_As if,_ the moon said.  
  
Ikram crossed his fist at her.  
  
Before Minudz slept that night, it signed to Ikram with exhaustion in its fingers and eyes. “Thank you,” it said, “for trusting me.”  
  
Ikram shrugged casually, even as his heart bloomed. To calm the strange rush of warmth in his chest, he shuffled again outside to make snowballs.  
  
Freezing rain killed Ikram's many piles four days into Elderwalk. The moon laughed, and Ikram moped inside with the others. They ate deer meat for a week, courtesy of Yekkan's elven bows.   
  
"The Afterlands are waking up," Yekkan said. "The orchards have buds. Any day now, we'll have our reprieve."   
  
Yekken was right. Ten days into Elderwalk, two white-haired elders woke. After stretching and dressing, they started carving denwatcher scars on Ikram’s chest while he lay prone on a long bench. The human sat in its nest of furs, chained again to the wall. Now that Shaman Monten breathed serenely, as healthy as ever, Minudz insisted on the chain.  
  
It insisted that Ikram draw, too. That Ikram pet its hair. That—  
  
"But what if he's mad?" a carver asked.  
  
"He's awake; he gets the scars." The other dragged the scarring scalpel across Ikram's torso, cleaning the image of the single open eye. "He’s fine. The mad ones fight more than this."  
  
Ikram twisted his wedged earrings. The sting lessened with each turn, so he pinched and squeezed. His eyes were still blurred. Even prodding his new septum bolt didn't clear his vision.  
  
He turned his head to watch Minudz chained in its nest and tried to focus on its resting face. Blurry brown eyes. A nose, somewhere in the middle. Soft lips.  
  
"So you lived." Chieftess Gax’s crone voice startled Ikram. Was he dreaming? He turned toward her unclear form.  
  
One of the elders pressed Ikram's shoulder down. "Don't move."  
  
Ikram lay back as instructed, eyes unfocused.  
  
Chieftess Gax continued, "I had dreams about you, in slumber. Odd dreams."  
  
"Halfies?" Ikram muttered. He hated that everyone saw half-orcs. Chieftess Gax wasn't even a shaman. Shouldn't prophetic visions be limited to shamans who could better interpret them? Rather than just assuming—  
  
"Excuse me?" Chieftess Gax said.  
  
"Nevermind."  
  
Her sharp nails clicked against the pearl-handled daggers. "Tungsk informed me of the raiders."  
  
Ikram tensed. The second carver flicked his muscles so that he'd relax.  
  
"I will commune with the Chiefs of our sister tribes, but it seems that this mountain owes you a debt."  
  
Ikram stayed silent as he faced the blurry ceiling. Gouges in the hard-packed clay above the firepit stared at him. He could almost make out the craters of a moon. Had he drawn one there?  
  
The second elder prodded his shoulder. "Chieftess asked you a question."  
  
"Huh?" Ikram's head lulled. He pinched his septum, and his vision focused slightly. Not fully. He thought he might never be able to see clearly again.  
  
"You still wish to keep the human?"  
  
Ikram pressed up. The first elder pulled back the scalpel to keep the scar intact. His torso dripped blood, downward, toward his belly. The second elder clucked and mopped the fresh wounds with cloth.  
  
"Minudz is part of us now," Ikram said. "It stood against raiders. It helped our sister clans. Ekken's fallborn litter survives because of it. High Shaman Monten Firestorm survives because of it. It saved my life, again and again. It is of us."  
  
"Don’t speak in riddles. State your request."  
  
"Make Minudz a member of our clan."  
  
Chieftess Gax's nostrils flared, ever so slightly. "It has not been tested."  
  
Ikram's jaw set. "Hasn't it? It was a denwatcher as much as me."  
  
"I will allow it to take the trials. My idiot son might insist anyway."  
  
"It still has to take trials?"  
  
"I will _allow_ it to take trials _after_ we neutralize the cracks in its brain."  
  
_Cracks?_ Ikram's mouth opened dumbly. _Right, Minudz was still a vessel._  
  
Chieftess Gax hefted her wrinkled hand and brushed a lock of overgrown hair from Ikram's forehead. Not even his own parents did that. "I know," she said. "Denwatching addles the mind. Finish your scars and take to the burrows."  
  
"But—"  
  
"Did you also forget Orcish, child?" Chieftess Gax tugged on his septum bolt, and a wave of white pain pierced through his head and skull. "Take to the burrows when your scars are finished. I will see you in twelve weeks."  
  
The Chieftess left. He lay back.  
  
Ikram's eyes caught on the human again.  
  
"But Minudz?" What would Minudz do for twelve weeks? Humans didn’t hibernate.  
  
The scalpel bit into his pectoral, in the semblance of a large, open eye. First elder said, "Tell you what I'll do, Ikky. We'll transfer your human to the burrow, so it can braid your hair or whatever while you sleep."  
  
Ikram shook his head. The human would be so bored, chained up next to a bunch of sleeping denwatchers. And who knew what the other orcs, just waking, would do to a human in their midst. He'd taken for granted that the whole of his family was asleep—his sisters, his parents, his cousins, their children.  
  
Minudz needed someone to watch over it, to protect it from his family. Only one person came to mind, the person he trusted most in the world, but Kren was still unconscious. He needed to find Tungsk, to let him know that Minudz should be in Kren’s care.  
  
His eyes closed once, wet in preparation for sleep. His throat opened, and he yawned. Now that he knew sleep was near, his mind only wanted that. He twisted the rod in his ear, pinched his septum. _Stay awake. Find Tungsk._  
  
The first elder pronounced Ikram’s denwatcher scar complete, slathered the blood from his chest, and bandaged it. Ikram stood from the bench.  
  
He swayed. His bare foot neared the fire. The second elder steadied him.  
  
"Are you solid, child?"  
  
Ikram grunted. _Where is Tungsk?_ The den swam in his head. The fires melded with the walls, the human faded into the mud and clay. Brown hair, brown mud, brown furs. Its chain rattled, like a lullaby.  
  
The elder’s hands gripped him, but they couldn’t hold his weight. "Legs, boy. Use your rutting legs."  
  
"Kren," Ikram exhaled.  
  
"Oh sod."  
  
Ikram collapsed forward, asleep before he hit the ground.  
  
#


	14. Twelve Weeks

Fog lapped at Ikram’s ankles. Pastel colors whirled within the low clouds, obscuring the worn leather of his boots and the tip of the hundred-meter blade he gripped in his hands. Darkness stretched above, a smoky, starless night.  
  
The moon walked toward him, with a matching weapon draped lazily over her shoulder. She bore the sword’s weight with ease, her wrist loose and gait unburdened. Comets and stardust gleamed in the metal. Her face was far too bright to see. And though nothing about her resembled the giant round rock orbiting the earth, this was the goddess, Moon.  
  
She stopped, her feet apart and her hand on her cosmic blade.  
  
"Where am I?" Ikram asked.  
  
The moon said, _I was promised a fight._  
  
"Why?" Ikram asked.  
  
The moon stamped her foot. The fog rippled, and small waves lapped at Ikram's knees. Dewy stars clung to his trousers.  
  
_I do not owe you a reason._  
  
"Then I don’t owe you a fight," Ikram snapped.  
  
_I have what you need._  
  
"What do I need?" Ikram asked.  
  
The moon pointed downward, through the fog. The mist parted, and he stood on clear sky. The six-pointed arena swam far below, mountains in a scorched wasteland of peaks and lava. A red shimmering pearl glistened in the goddess’s moonlight, alluring and alien.  
  
Ikram reached to pluck it up, but the sky gave way beneath him, and he plummeted.  
  
He stood in the dream’s mist, again, facing the moon.  
  
_How long will you avoid our fight?_  
  
"What is that in the canyon?" Ikram asked.  
  
_What you need._  
  
"Why do I need it?"  
  
The world dimmed as though clouds were passing in front of the sun, though the clouds traveled underfoot like great looming whales and no sun lived here. A red light blinked above him. The strange pearl crossed in the sky, winking steadily on a background of full darkness.  
  
It came by him, silently past his ear like a summer beetle.  
  
Ikram dropped the sword handle to swat it. His fingers skimmed the pearl. The barrier crumbled, and gravity slurped him down. A cloud devoured him in its gaping, stormy maw.  
  
When the innards of the cloud dropped away, he faced Moon again.  
  
"What is happening?"  
  
_You are avoiding our fight._  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
_Underground. Like a coward._  
  
Ikram looked around. The sky was dark, all the stars in her sword, and Moon stood above the mist. The world wavered around him. "I'm asleep."  
  
She nodded. She sharpened her sword with a whetstone of abyssal onyx, plucked from the depths of space.  
  
Ikram ran his free hand through his hair, letting his face rest in his palm. "I fell asleep without asking Kren to watch over Minudz."  
  
_Forget the Olom-kin. Come to me._ The moon slid the sword down the stone. The low ring vibrated the sky beneath, with thunder. Lightning jumped between the whales.  
  
Ikram pulled his blade up. The tip dragged along the fog below. "I won't forget Minudz."  
  
The moon grinned, a sinister thing. _Why not? It has already left you._  
  
"What?"  
  
She pointed beneath the clouds. A tiny figure raced across plains of wheat and grass at the edge of the Afterlands.  
  
Mud hair. Yellow stone.  
  
"How do I know this is real?"  
  
Moon scoffed at him and dragged the whetstone along her stardust sword once more.  
  
_I give you secrets of the universe, and you wonder if they're real. Ungrateful child._  
  
"Secrets?" Ikram asked. "What secrets?"  
  
Moon rested the cosmic sword across her lap. One hand reached into the air and plucked out the red pearl. She popped it into her mouth and bit down.  
  
A crack sounded, and she spit into the earth below. The bead caught fire and bulleted toward the spire mountains. The peaks stretched on for a hundred miles, like black thorns between pocks of red-orange lava.  
  
He blinked, the perspective of the range near-incomprehensible. How far? Across the Afterlands, east of the Iron Tide?  
  
"That's the edge of the world."  
  
_Hardly,_ the moon said. _It's my arena._  
  
"I can't go there."  
  
_Coward._ The moon swung her sword. Her blade grazed the mountain tops, shearing the peaks near the place where the pearl had landed. The sky below parted in a ruby blaze.  
  
Ikram plummeted once again. Stars and inky space flared overhead as he fell toward spike-mountains past the edge of the world.  
  
He stood in front of the goddess again. Her sword glinted with galaxies, stretched from their spirals into the beveled edge.  
  
_Fight me._  
  
Ikram swung his blade. It scraped across the clear surface where they stood, too-too heavy.  
  
The moon smiled. _Almost ready._  
  
Ikram gasped awake. The musk of animal furs and sweat and old blood caught in his nose as his fingers dug into thick blankets. His eyes adjusted to the dim light. Three other denwatchers—Hamma, Lente, and Kikrett—lay nearby. Hamma's heavy arm was draped across Ikram's knees, and Lente had rolled over onto his shoulder.  
  
After he gently extracted himself from the tangle, Ikram carefully badger-crawled his way across the three others. Hamma, like him, had newly bandaged scars. He pressed the low dirt door of the denwatcher burrow outward, into a cool afternoon of late spring.  
  
His skin sang as the summer essence within burst awake in the sun. He stretched and threw back his neck to let the light find the underside of his chin and arms. An old lullaby whispered in his ears: _You will wake after winter and be green in the Garden._ Someone waved to him from a nearby mud-straw hut. The denwatcher’s burrow was much nearer the village than the den mound.  
  
"Sleepy Baby Ikky, you live!" someone called. Ikram blinked and focused on the elder, the man who'd carved his scars. Pekkel. Names were easier when he wasn’t fighting sleep.  
  
Ikram’s voice cracked with new use. "Don't call me Ikky."  
  
"Sure kid," Pekkel said. "Sleepy baby Ikram, you live! I think Djakka is preparing for Brightmorning ceremonies in the Chieftess's tent."  
  
Ikram nodded. _Where was the Chieftess’ tent?_ He swept his head from side to side, trying to orient himself.  
  
Pekkel grinned and put a hand on Ikram's back. "I'll take you there," he said.  
  
"Where's Minudz?"  
  
Pekkel patted Ikram's shoulder as he led Ikram toward the ornate hut trimmed with shimmering fabrics and dried flowers. "I'll let you talk to Chieftess Gax."  
  
"It's gone, isn't it?"  
  
Pekkel nodded. "Off like a shot before Whetstone. It smashed its own hand to get out of the cuff. You're taking this better than I thought."  
  
"The moon told me."  
  
"Ah, right. Tungsk told us about you and the moon."  
  
Ikram ignored Pekkel's look of pity. "Where is Tungsk?"  
  
"Firing pots, probably."  
  
"He's awake? Already?"  
  
"Only by a couple days. Us old farts are lonely without him every spring."  
  
"How long was I asleep?" Only four denwatchers were still in the burrow when he'd woken.  
  
"Twelve weeks, five days. Just in time for Brightmorning." Pekkel bopped him in the nose, and Ikram sprung back. At least the septum piercing didn't hurt anymore. "Yekkan only beat you by twelve hours."  
  
"Where is he?"  
  
Pekkel paused. "I'll let you talk to Chieftess Gax."  
  
Ikram pulled his shoulder away from the elder's leading hand. "What is going on? Why do I have to hear everything from the chieftess?"  
  
Pekkel pursed his lips and gestured the chieftess’s hut, circular and painted in golds and reds for the upcoming Brightmorning celebration. Ikram entered, without Pekkel, through the thick blankets hanging from the ingress.  
  
Light filtered through the open center of the hut's top. The chieftess and Djakka studied buckskin maps. Djakka wore a gaudy costume with wide shoulders and ombre triangles down his back. He was the dwarven mountains on fire. He was the embodiment of the Red Exodus. He was hope. The costume was still silly.  
  
"Are you being sacrificed to a dragon, Leader?" Ikram asked.  
  
Djakka whirled. "Ikram!" The chieftess’ son approached with arms out, and Ikram accepted the embrace as Djakka squeezed. "Have you eaten?"  
  
Ikram shook his head. "What happened during Whetstone?"  
  
Djakka patted Ikram's back and pressed him toward the small table where Chieftess Gax still studied the maps. "Come sit. I'll have food brought."  
  
"But—"  
  
"Sit, child," the chieftess insisted, and Ikram was compelled. He crossed his legs and looked over the maps along with her. Thinned buckskin drawings were stitched together at the seams to create an amalgam of the whole Afterlands. Kren’s handwriting dotted the west, Orksport and the Fallen Isle. A shaded mess showed Gutting Swamp and a stark symbol for death. Forests, mountains, rivers, and oceans, the whole orc world, lay on this stretched canvas.  
  
The edge of the world was written, clear as day, along a loose blackened seam.  
  
The chieftess said something, but Ikram didn't hear it.  
  
"Huh?" he asked.  
  
"Are you still sleep mad, child?"  
  
Ikram shook his head.  
  
"You told Pekkel the moon spoke to you while you slept."  
  
"How did you hear that?"  
  
She touched her own nose. "I. Am. Chieftess. You deny it?"  
  
"She told me Minudz left. I saw it, running across the Afterlands."  
  
"Where?" Djakka asked.  
  
The chieftess humphed. "You, my son, have no excuse to be mad. Offer me one."  
  
"Poor genes," Djakka said.  
  
His mother whapped him on the head with her palm as he sat down. A ceramic bowl of mostly hot wheat gruel and rice landed in Ikram's lap, brought by a teen orcmaid. Ikram shoveled food into his mouth for a full minute before Djakka caught his eye again.  
  
Djakka asked, "Where did you see the human running?"  
  
Ikram wiped his hand on his soft sleep pants. He examined the map, still chewing, and pointed to a familiar set of plains and grasslands. "Here."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
Ikram nodded.  
  
"That's on the skirmish border," Djakka muttered. "Disputed lands."  
  
Ikram tensed. His hands reflexively went to his side, but he didn't have his knives. "I have to go."  
  
Djakka pressed a hand on his shoulder. "The human has an eight-week head start. Your tracking skills are abysmal. You have no chance." Djakka let go. "Besides, I sent Blex and Kren."  
  
The chieftess scoffed.  
  
Djakka cleared his throat. "Blex is the best tracker I know. And Kren is simply the best."  
  
"Dangerous to send two off together leaderless. _Breeds_ contempt," the chieftess said.  
  
"I'm not concerned," Djakka said.  
  
"They don't know orcsign," Ikram said. "How are they going to communicate? I need to go."  
  
"We'll leave at dawn," Djakka said. "After the Brightmorning festival. Sharpen your weapons and celebrate with us. Dance with your people"  
  
"But—"  
  
Chieftess Gax clicked her nails against the low table. "Take a bowman, my idiot son," she said.  
  
Ikram said, "Yekkan’s awake."  
  
Djakka agreed, "We'll pick up Yekkan from South Stream."  
  
"One more," Chieftess Gax insisted. "I won't have you killed."  
  
"It's not a warparty, mother."  
  
"Which is why I don't force another shaman on you. Not that any would go, after what you did to the last one."  
  
Ikram's eyes widened. "You told—"  
  
Djakka's hand flew up for silence. "We don't need a shaman. We need the human."  
  
"Minudz," Ikram muttered. Gruel fell from his mouth onto his lap.  
  
"The boy's face tells me everything I need to know, my terrible son." The chieftess rolled the map. "Leave me."  
  
"Yes, mother." Djakka stood, with Ikram, and led him outside. At the weapons stores, Ikram collected his seven knives from a tangled web of unclaimed spears and unstrung bows.  
  
"I need more than this," Ikram said, as he corded them onto his belt. "This isn’t enough to make it through a skirmish zone."  
  
"Did the moon tell you anything else?" Djakka asked. Torchlight filtered through the thin-thatched roof. He looked like fire, in glimmering robes. Still a silly costume.  
  
Ikram nodded as he rifled through a chest of discarded blades. None were as sturdy as he'd like. Perhaps he could barter some, or challenge someone. "Do you think Tungsk would have extra knives?"  
  
"He might, but focus, Ikram."  
  
"I need knives. I have to get to Minudz."  
  
Djakka grabbed Ikram’s shoulders and spun him. "What did the moon tell you?"  
  
Ikram narrowed his eyes as understanding dawned. "You want the pearl."  
  
"You saw, didn't you?" Djakka said. "You saw our future. You know we can't wait."  
  
"You don't want to find Minudz. You just want that thing. That's what you were looking for last year."  
  
"Yes, Ikram," Djakka said. "And somehow, you've seen. I've been wandering blind, gathering maps, but you've seen it. You will save our people."  
  
"How will a red pearl save our people?" Ikram asked.  
  
Djakka gently squeezed Ikram’s arms, reassuring. "It will unite us. Flourish us. That’s why we must find it."  
  
Ikram snatched back, out of Djakka's grasp. "After."  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"First, we find Minudz and bring it back."  
  
Djakka's face twisted, his jaw jutting forward with anger. "You dare defy me? After I spared the human's life? After I spared yours?"  
  
"You'll waste your life searching without me. The moon didn't show you."  
  
Djakka's fists clenched, and Ikram could read the cold fury in his eyes. Nostrils flared next to tense cheeks.  
  
"After we retrieve Minudz, I'll take you. We'll give the moon the fight she wants."  
  
"Damn the moon," Djakka muttered.  
  
"She’s coy and cocky. And her sword is made of stars. You’ll like her."  
  
Djakka relented. Anger deflated in his cheeks, though his eyes still held a buried glimmer. The chieftess' son laughed, and his shoulders jingled with bells embedded in the costume robes. "Go get more knives," Djakka said.  
  
#


	15. Brightmorning

As Djakka finished his ceremonial preparations, Ikram went to the kiln. Hip level counters circumscribed sweaty walls in the warm clay-coated hut. Shelves laden with bowls, trays, and trinkets cluttered all available space. Tungsk faced away from the door, past the kiln, painting bowls. His apprentice stoked the fire, mid-room.  
  
Ikram sidled along the counters and examined the sculpted pots awaiting firing. Tungsk applied a careful glazed pattern onto a shallow dish. White pillars of painted smoke puffed into the gray-tinted sky. Seven of these bowls lay drying, as he painted the same wintry landscape onto the eighth.  
  
"Warning in the Wane," Tungsk said, unprompted. His brush faltered. "This is Magga, as he warns the other dens on the mountain."  
  
Ikram looked closer. The glaze over the etching of Magga had a thin purple tint, and a long line of silver paint over his eye. Ikram could almost hear the denwatcher’s laughter again, hear his lectures about Rugged tactics, see his fury over losing Conquer. Ikram cleared his throat. "Are these for the sister tribes?"  
  
Tungsk nodded. "We lost four dens."  
  
_Four._ Hundreds of helpless people, slain. He couldn’t think about that. "Was Magga found?"  
  
"Arrow through the neck. Bled out and froze after warning the South Stream den. Buried before Whetstone."  
  
Ikram nodded. Magga used to tease as easily as breathing— _You’re too easy, baby Ikky._ Neither anymore. His finger grazed a dry image of Magga on one of the finished bowls. "I didn't know him very well," Ikram said.  
  
Tungsk finished his brushwork and set down the boarhair brush. "You're wishing you could have known him, now that he's dead and there's no time anymore."  
  
Ikram shook his head. "Eight died in my warparty. Dead is dead, and no one can undo the past. I know better than to wish I could have known him better."  
  
"Knowing is different than feeling," Tungsk said. "Why did you come here?"  
  
"We're leaving to find Minudz at dawn," Ikram said. "I need more knives."  
  
Tungsk disarmed himself and passed Ikram four atrocity knives.  
  
"But now you have no weapons."  
  
Tungsk laughed. "Only a fool keeps all his weapons as blades."  
  
Ikram corded the knives to his belt and twisted his septum piercing, unwilling to leave.  
  
"What, child?"  
  
"Why did Minudz leave?" he signed.  
  
An evil grin tightened Tungsk’s sagged cheeks. "Did your heart fall out of your chest and run off southward?" he signed.  
  
Ikram resisted the desire to cross his fist at the man and shrugged instead.  
  
Tungsk explained, "It stayed by your side until your scars were healed. For six of those days, I stayed upright, teaching sign to Djakka's second. Krennock. Djakka and his Blixtek tried learning for two days but didn't pick much up. When I couldn't stay awake any longer, I crawled into the burrow next to Yekkan. Last I saw, the human was chained outside. The day after I fell asleep, it stomped its own hand and slipped its chain. Pekkel was on duty. He was under orders to shoot, so he winged it, but you know that won’t stop the little djulid."  
  
"I still don't understand why."  
  
"Maybe it overheard something. Maybe those interlopers snuck into its brain again. Maybe the moon called it to fight."  
  
"The moon doesn't want to fight Minudz," Ikram said.  
  
"Of course she doesn't." Tungsk rolled his eyes. "Perhaps she wants to kiss its freckles behind the den where she thinks no one can see."  
  
Ikram blushed and looked to the kiln. The apprentice stoked the fire while pretending not to listen. Ikram pinched his ears and hoped the blush wouldn't be too visible in the firelit room. He turned to leave.  
  
"Ikky, wait," Tungsk said.  
  
Ikram signed, "What?" He ignored the nickname, barely.  
  
"Take an egg." Tungsk pointed to a high shelf nearby. Glazed ceramic eggs, colored in greens and blues and yellows and reds, lined in a row. He plucked one up, and something moved deep within, a small tumble. He set the yellow back and picked another.  
  
"Which one?" Ikram asked. "What are they for?"  
  
"I have work to do, child. Take an egg."  
  
Ikram grabbed a dark red one with pale glazed dots around the circumference. He tucked it into his belt-pouch, next to the few coins he'd gathered from fallen enemies. The curtained strands of broken ceramics tinkled as he left. Cool evening air rushed in.  
  
Lente stood outside.  
  
"Ikram!" Lente pulled Ikram into a shoulder hug. "How long have you been upright?"  
  
Ikram tried counting, failed, and said, "A few hours I guess."  
  
"I just woke up. Lucky for us to be awake in time for the fire ceremonies, huh?" Lente's grin was relentless. "Speaking of, where's Minudz? You run it off with your snoring?"  
  
Ikram's jaw tightened. He brushed aside Lente to leave.  
  
Lente followed. "What?"  
  
"Minudz left." Ikram didn’t look back.  
  
"No way," Lente said. "Why?"  
  
Ikram tamped down a low growl in his throat. "I'll ask when I find it."  
  
"How do you expect to find it? The Afterlands are a million miles big. Is someone tracking it?"  
  
Ikram nodded. "Kren is."  
  
"Krennock Firestorm? One of Shaman Monten's litters?" Lente’s arms flew up in an animated story. "Oh man, did you hear how pissed the High Shaman was when he heard he got healed by a human? Threatened to skin it alive, right there. I was supposed to be sleeping by then, but you snore."  
  
"I do not." Ikram’s fingers twitched near the corded knives on his belt.  
  
"Sure. And fire's not hot."  
  
Ikram grunted. "Leave me alone."  
  
"Were those Minudz' last words to you?" Lente snorted jovially.  
  
Ikram's shoulder hit Lente's ribs. Lente’s nails bit into Ikram's neck as they both hit the ground. Their ankles tangled. Ikram undercut punches onto Lente's side as they grappled. Lente flipped Ikram and he ate dirt. Ikram grabbed the underside of Lente's chin and pressed backward. His nails dug into neck and cheek. _Bleed, asshole,_ Ikram thought. _Bleed._  
  
Other orcs shouted, some cheering. Tungsk's tenor was muffled with dirt and fists and grunting. Ikram bound his arm around Lente's throat and pushed him up with a knee, only to overshoot and land on his back again.  
  
The curve of Lente's longbow caught on Ikram's windpipe, each arm pinned with Lente’s bony knees. Ikram let out a deep, feral growl with what was left of his air.  
  
Lente grunted. "Had enough, Moon-boy?"  
  
Tungsk grabbed Lente by the ear and pulled him up. The bow released Ikram’s neck, but when he tried to sit, he found Tungsk's boot-heel on his shoulder.  
  
"Ikram, what are you doing?" Djakka stared. His fire-cape hung down. Tungsk lifted his boot, and Djakka helped Ikram up by the arm. Ikram rubbed his throat as Djakka walked him toward the ceremony setup with one hand clamped on Ikram’s elbow.  
  
In the village green, shamans prepared wide bamboo with explosive powders. Farmers brought spring crops of all colors. A hefty boar roasted on an overladen pit. Fat slid from the pig, along a shaft, and into a bucket at the side of the fire.  
  
"Sit." Djakka gestured to a stool. Ikram sat, and Djakka passed him a whetstone. "What the hell is going on with you?"  
  
Ikram unknotted one of Tungsk's knives and started sharpening.  
  
Djakka snapped his fingers in Ikram's face. "Talk. What happened?"  
  
"Lente insulted me."  
  
"Lente insults everybody."  
  
Ikram's lips pursed.  
  
"He said something about the human," Djakka concluded. "Sod. I should have—"  
  
_You should have what? Killed it?_ Ikram glared and considered scraping the leader scars off Djakka’s cheeks. His red blood would match the fire-cape.  
  
"You can't just attack people, Ikram. There's only so long I can protect you."  
  
_Who protects who?_ "I'm going to bathe." "Good. You smell like four months of night sweats."  
  
_Don't punch Djakka,_ Ikram commanded himself. _He's your best friend._  
  
Ikram left, taking his knives and the whetstone to the bathing stream. In the morning, they'd set off. He'd find Minudz. He'd ask _why._  
  
At the log-dammed stream, Ikram stripped off his hide armor and underclothes, boots and trousers, slung his weapons belt over his shoulder, and waded into the cool water. A few young ones played in the shallower parts as the sun set.  
  
Ikram shucked a luff plant, found a wedge of abandoned soap, and lathered. The rough plant scratched the new skin near his denwatching scars. Djakka really thought he protected Ikram? Who lay asleep when elf raiders came? Who plucked off shamans while Djakka swung his sword about? Ikram scrubbed, until he was raw and chilled to his bones by the mountain stream. Who did the moon choose? Not Djakka.  
  
He stalked out and sat on the boulders with his clothes and his whetstone. He sharpened his knives until he dried, then dressed in his armor and affixed the loose belt around his middle. Small explosions sounded, and fireworks soared over the village as Brightmorning ceremonies started. Fire shot into the sky and rained down with a dozen colors. The whole mountain would be lit like this, as villages danced and cheered and celebrated freedom under the endless stars.  
  
The sparkle of the raining fire reflected off the pool. The waning half-moon paled in comparison. Ikram tilted a loose blade to see her semicircle reflection. A celestial rock watched silently, half-covered in darkness.  
  
"What, no insults today?" he muttered at the moon.  
  
"Your nose looks even dumber with that bolt," the moon said, with his sister's voice.  
  
He frowned and found his middle littermate standing nearby. "Ananzi."  
  
She grinned. "Ikram." Her lower teeth had grown in well, pressed against her bottom lip. She'd have her pick of warriors or artists or farmers, if she ever decided to settle down.  
  
His sisters were not exactly the settling type.  
  
"We thought you were dead. I had the most terrible dreams," Ananzi accused. "You should apologize."  
  
Ikram sneered and corded his knife again. He looked for an out, maybe back toward the Brightmorning festival where his warrior and denwatching scars would mean something. They clearly meant nothing to Ananzi.  
  
He took his first step, and his oldest sister Ulanock appeared in his way. "We heard you took a mate, little brother," she said.  
  
"An ugly one!" Eggrek said from behind. His three littermates had found him.  
  
Ananzi laughed. _You can’t just attack people,_ Djakka had said. Did sisters count as people?  
  
"We figured you might take an odd mate, but we never figured you for a human rut doll." Egg made a lewd gesture with her palms and thumbs. Though hard to see in the dim light, Ikram understood the gist.  
  
Anan said, "Have you heard about the half-orcs?"  
  
"There's half-orcs?"  
  
"Not yet, but the denwatchers predicted them for the summer."  
  
"Ikram, you slut. You impregnated it."  
  
"There are supposed to be six!"  
  
"Perhaps mother will stop pestering us about breeding," Egg said.  
  
"Shut up!" Ikram shouted. "You don't know what you're talking about."  
  
His sisters turned to him. Their green eyes glinted in the dark, and their nails clicked against the knives at their side. What Ikram wouldn't give to see a friendly pair of mud brown eyes right about now.  
  
"Enlighten us, human-rutter."  
  
"Last-draft warrior."  
  
"Fodder for slaughter."  
  
"Cowards." Ikram double pointed to each. "You’re all cowards. You risk nothing, and think you can judge my life? I'm not here for you. I'm not on this planet to please you, or mother, or Djakka. And I have a kismet with a human, so what? I love it, so what? Let me live my life."  
  
Ikram breathed in the rare silence, while his sisters watched him with unreadable eyes.  
  
Ananzi broke first, squealing. "I'm going to be an amazing aunt! I'll make them tiny boots and carve them stick swords."  
  
"You love it?" Egg asked. "What's that like?"  
  
Ula tapped her heel. "You don't love it. You're mistaken."  
  
"I'm not," Ikram said.  
  
"You feel sorry for it, because you're soft inside underneath all those scars," Ula said. "That's not love. Love is power and sacrifice. Love is a force. Love is not a soft boy pining for a friend, or a weak warrior begging for help from some gadzork god."  
  
Ikram met Ula's stare. "Or a girl who stares at the chieftess's son?" he said.  
  
Ula smiled. "Egg, Anan, grab him." The younger two grabbed his arms. The knot of flesh on Ikram’s wrist twinged. “We heard you needed knives, brother. We didn’t realize you’d be so—”  
  
“Thankless,” Egg said.  
  
“Difficult,” Anan said.  
  
“Ungrateful,” Ula finished. Ula's head bashed into Ikram's nose with a resounding crack. His head snapped back. His eldest litter-sister wiped her forehead and took a corded knife off her belt. She threw it on the ground. A gift. “We’ve had twelve weeks, hearing stories about you.”  
  
“Ikram the Shaman-Killer,” Anan said. She threw down a knife too. The leather-covered blade landed near Ula’s.  
  
“The savior of the mountain.” Egg added her knife to the pile.  
  
Ula pointed to the moon. “The moon-mad denwatcher.”  
  
“What’s up with the moon thing? Are you crazy?” Egg still held onto his arm.  
  
Anan asked, “Do you really want to fight the moon? We knew you were stupid but—”  
  
“But we never thought you were that dumb,” Ula said. “Soft, but not dumb.”  
  
“Yes!” Anan punched his side. Ikram tried to pull away but they held tighter. “Soft, not dumb. That’s our Ikram.”  
  
“Oh! Anan!” Egg squealed. “Wanna know Ikram’s secret nickname?”  
  
“Don’t,” Ikram growled.  
  
Egg let go of his arm and jumped back. “You don’t want me to tell them? Why ever not? Sleepy—”  
  
“Don’t!” Ikram shucked off Anan and lunged at Egg. She jumped away.  
  
“Baby—”  
  
Anan caught Ikram’s hair and snatched back. His hands clutched her wrist and he leaned forward to pull her feet off the ground. Egg shouldered him in the stomach. The breath knocked out of him, and he stumbled into Ula. Anan landed bodily onto Egg, who switched to punching her instead quick as a bird-trap. Within seconds, the four were on the ground, brawling and beating on each other, barely avoiding the pile of atrocity knives.  
  
When his littermates were done with him, his armor was muddy with spring dirt. Anan, wild-haired and exhausted, kicked him one last time in the meat of his leg. “Don’t die again,” she demanded.  
  
Egg agreed, “You’re annoying, but we miss you when you’re dead.”  
  
“I’m not dead.”  
  
“Not yet,” Ula muttered. She popped the last knife from her belt, set it on the pile, then she stalked back toward the explosive lights and faint music of the Brightmorning ceremonies.  
  
Egg roughed Ikram’s hair, and he pulled back. Undaunted, she pinched Anan’s arm, so Anan popped her with an open palm, then ran. Anan and Egg followed Ula into the trees, quickly overtaking her. Spitting and yelling and pitched giggles faded as they grew further away.  
  
Ikram looked at the pile they’d left. Good pieces, strong blades. He’d need to bathe again, but he had plenty of knives for the journey south.  
  
#


	16. Archers

Ikram waited for Djakka near dawn as the fire ceremonies finished. The chief's son finally shed that absurd cloak and started slowly gathering supplies. Ikram watched with his nose swollen, paid no favors by the absorbent hemp cloths shoved into his nostrils. Once again, his septum was tender to the touch. _Dumb sisters._  
  
Djakka finally glanced to Ikram. "You look terrible," he asserted.  
  
"Can we go?" Ikram was impatient to leave the village. His sisters had let him off relatively easy this time, but he didn't want to stick around to test their ire in the morning light. He was almost more anxious to leave than he was to find Minudz.  
  
Maybe Ula was right. Maybe what he felt wasn't love. Maybe he'd tricked himself into thinking he felt something he didn't, on a high of coffee and sleeplessness.  
  
"We're waiting for our archer," Djakka said.  
  
"I thought we were picking Yekkan up from South Stream?"  
  
Djakka smiled. "Our other archer."  
  
Ikram did not like that smile.  
  
A figure knocked on a support beam. "Am I late?" Lente said.  
  
"Late?" Ikram repeated. Lente grinned, and Ikram’s stomach churned. They’d been waiting for _Lente_. Ikram rounded on Djakka. "Not him."  
  
"Mother insisted."  
  
"Pick someone else."  
  
"That would delay us."  
  
Lente pouted, a mockery. "What's wrong with me, Ikky? Is this because I wouldn't rut you while we were denwatching?"  
  
"I'm going to kill him," Ikram said.  
  
Djakka sighed. "At least wait until we're out of the village."  
  
Lente held open the heavy cloth door and made a hiss of pity as Ikram passed. "Ooh, you may also want to wait until your face deflates. Your aim is going to be piss until your eye opens back up. Can you even breathe with that nose?"  
  
"Behave, Lente," Djakka said. "Ikram has seniority."  
  
Lente sighed, dramatically raising his wrist to his forehead. "I’m the oldest one here and still bottom of the totem." Ikram tried to roll his eyes, stopping when his swollen socket throbbed. Lente was only two years older, and he’d never served in a warparty.  
  
At a good pace, they reached the South Stream village by noon. Djakka and Lente were greeted by a gaggle of girls, while Ikram tried his best to blend behind them with his eyes down. He shied away from two orc-maids prodding his bruised elbow and put Djakka between them, to little effect. They tittered as he pulled away, then slipped around to his other side.  
  
"You two nymphs leave Ikram alone!" Yekkan's voice bellowed. No fire-whisper now. The South Stream maidens backed away from the three newcomers. Yekken stepped forward, a pair of elven bows crossed over his shoulders. "Yeesh, Ikram, what happened to your face? When I left the burrow, your nose was not that shape."  
  
Ikram signed, "I disagreed with my sisters."  
  
Yekkan signed, "About what?"  
  
"Minudz."  
  
"Where is the little djulid? Do you know yet?" Yekkan didn’t glance around the party, his eyes on Ikram as they signed. The old bowman knew Minudz had left.  
  
Ikram’s mouth and hands tensed. "It ran southwest. We're going to go find it."  
  
"What are they saying?" Djakka asked Lente.  
  
"Something something, girl-brothers, something Minudz something something, go," Lente translated. "They're really fast."  
  
Djakka frowned at all three.  
  
Yekkan filled in the blanks aloud. "He said you're going southwest to find the human."  
  
"Yes. And we're conscripting you to come with us. We need another range-fighter."  
  
Yekkan shook his head. "My sister is going to have her litter any day. I need to be here."  
  
"On the orders of Chieftess Gax."  
  
Yekkan signed, "Your friend is a bully and a brute."  
  
"Yes, he is," Ikram returned.  
  
Djakka slapped Ikram's hands. "Stop that. Go pack your bag, Yekkan."  
  
"No," Yekkan said. "Suttak is the last of my family. Her mate was woken to fend off the elf raiders. He's of no use to her now. I won't leave her."  
  
"You will do your duty to your clan."  
  
Meek no longer, Yekkan snapped open his front leathers and displayed the scars beneath. Denwatcher scars with six drags, warparty scars, archer scars, dwarf-killing scars, all were littered over a pouched belly and peppered chest hair. "I have done my duty to my clan. My duty is here now, with my sister."  
  
Djakka snapped, "I am the last son of Gax."  
  
"And I will still not go with you," Yekkan said. "Good luck finding Minudz. When you return, Ikram, come see us."  
  
"Thank you," Ikram signed.  
  
Djakka took a menacing step forward.  
  
And thirteen orc-maidens aimed arrows at his chest. The girls had been so friendly before, and now they stood ready to fight. Yekkan melted between them. Djakka took a moment, surveying the arrow tips with his dark eyes, then stepped back toward the forest.  
  
Ikram and Lente followed. When they reached the trees, Lente grinned and clapped Djakka on the shoulder. "Condolences, my man. That was embarrassing."  
  
Djakka popped him across the face quick as lightning. Lente stepped back, to follow the seething warrior from a safer distance. Ikram walked beside Lente as his lip puffed up.  
  
"Look, Ikky," Lente said with a lopsided grin. "Now we match."  
  
Ikram snorted. Had Chieftess Gax known Yekkan would refuse them? Perhaps she'd sent along Lente as a replacement, not just a punishment. Lente was an annoying idiot, but he was high-spirited and an excellent archer.  
  
Djakka and Ikram searched for the path Kren left for them. Going south, single chalk lines around knee-level marked every third tree, something that had surely pissed off Blixtek as she tried to track the human through the brush.  
  
Ikram could just imagine Minudz running through the woods, and an annoyed orc-maiden following its path of careless steps and crushed plants. Animals probably shirked away from Blixtek’s constantly calls for Kren to _hurry the rutting hell up._  
  
But wouldn’t she have caught it by now?  
  
Humans needed to sleep for eight hours daily. In the light of early spring, Blixtek and Kren would only need two. Even with a full day's head start, Blixtek would have caught Minudz in four days or so. Humans didn't move that fast, and maybe Blixtek had a slower tracking speed, but—Ikram counted on his fingers—nearly sixty days had elapsed.  
  
Why hadn’t they caught Minudz by now?  
  
Ikram twisted his septum hook, as Lente called out the direction of the next tree. His nose ached, face swollen. Why hadn't they caught Minudz and come back? Or if they lost its trail, returned without?  
  
His eyes found Djakka as he called another tree. The trail was straight, and the three started into a jog southward.  
  
Where are they?  
  
Are they all dead?  
  
Near dusk, Lente found his first two mark. When he pointed out the change, Djakka explained Kren’s system: each mark was one day spent tracking. They continued until it was far too dark to find any more chalk marks. Ikram kept looking anyway.  
  
Lente and Djakka built a fire, caught and cooked a pheasant, while Ikram scoured the trees.  
  
"Come eat," Djakka called to him. "We'll search at first light."  
  
"We're losing time."  
  
"They've been gone eight weeks," Djakka said. "If they're not dead, we'll find them. If they are dead, then we don't need to rush."  
  
Ikram shoved off the tree with more force than necessary. Bark stripped. "How can you be such so callous? Aren’t you worried? Your Blex is there too."  
  
Djakka stoked the fire. "Blex can take care of herself."  
  
"And Kren? He needs a flank in fights. Neither of them is any good on a bow, or at throwing. They'll have to be in close combat."  
  
Djakka shrugged, his eyes fixed on the fire. "They're either dead or they're not."  
  
"You really don't care about anything but yourself and your stupid pearl, do you?"  
  
"What pearl?" Lente asked.  
  
"Remember who you're speaking to, Ikram."  
  
"Oh, I remember." Ikram growled. Thoughts welled up from his belly and stuck in his throat. "The last son of Gax. A child who thinks the world owes him glory. You use us like fodder. We’re bodies between you and death, but when your troops are in danger, you sit by the fire."  
  
Djakka stood slowly, drawing to his full height. The rumors that Djakka had ogre blood was easy to believe, as the fire's shadows danced over the thriving spring plants.  
  
"Remember who you are speaking to," Djakka said. Ikram tensed his stomach and clenched his jaw in preparation for Djakka's fist.  
  
Ikram waited, eyes nearly shut. After a long moment, Djakka just re-seated himself and tore into the roast pheasant. The fire crackled and night bugs sang. Ikram took a place by the fire, eyes cast outward.  
  
Lente broke the near-silence as he passed Ikram a pheasant wing. "What pearl?"  
  
Ikram bit into the soft pheasant and threw the bones into the fire. "The one the moon spat out."  
  
"Oh. More moon nonsense."  
  
Ikram glanced at Djakka, who still stared at the fire. Lente watched the stars. They traded watches and slept with hard, cold earth beneath their rawhide bedrolls.  
  
The next several days, they ran Kren’s trail during the daylight hours. Ikram slept poorly each night, tossing like his mind was on fire.  
  
He's seen Minudz's resurrection before, the glow cascading over its skin as Death rejected it. But Death was not a fickle goddess. Whatever battle Minudz's deity and Death fought, eventually Death would win. She would come after a denied creature with a cold fury. Minudz would share the same hell as necromancers and other beings that pissed off the pale lady.  
  
When he woke in the night, Ikram signed to the moon. "Protect them, or we'll never make it to your arena."  
  
The moon said nothing.  
  
"Protect them, or I won't fight you."  
  
No taunts. No sword.  
  
After three weeks, they reached the plains, where Kren had dropped chalk-marked stones and shreds of bark. Fifty-four. Fifty-five. Bags formed under Ikram’s eyes. Villages and small towns glinted in the distance, like treasures. Would Minudz have gone there?  
  
But the trail led around the towns. Minudz avoided people, human and orc alike.  
  
Dire badger musk coated a hill where they found rocks labeled fifty-nine. The badger watched with yellow eyes, and Ikram dared it. _Fight me._  
  
Lente said, “Don’t bait it, bunny-lover.”  
  
“Don’t call me bunny.”  
  
“Leave him be,” Djakka commanded.  
  
During the night, Ikram kept first watch, sketching in the dirt while Djakka and Lente breathed steadily in their bedrolls. He counted stars and talked to the moon, even though she refused to answer. Just a dead rock in the sky.  
  
Not even the moon was safe from Death.


	17. Slow

The fourth week, the moon winked at Ikram as she sunk behind the horizon.  
  
_Not dead yet._  
  
Ikram stared. Stars twinkled in the wake of the moon as she cascaded in the pre-dawn sky.  
  
Djakka woke, stretched, and grunted morning greetings. Ikram didn’t move.  
  
"You stuck in the sky, Ikram?" Djakka asked.  
  
Ikram broke out of the trance. He bounded to his feet. Chalk marks jumped from their posts on thick bamboo; Kren’s trail beckoned him. His steps quickened until he jogged. Lente and Djakka fell behind, stowing their bedrolls as they chased him.  
  
Lente fire-whispered, “You’re going to get killed, moon-boy!”  
  
Djakka hushed him.  
  
Ikram dashed over fallen branches and through bamboo, his feet slamming the ground as he ran heavily. He was close. He could feel it. He leapt over the remains of a campfire and picked out the hash mark on the pine near it. Sixty. Colorful cloths draped over the tree’s branches, deep red and soft blue. Humans must have left those, he could smell whiffs in the air, but he did not stop to look.  
  
He'd stop when he reached Minudz, not before.   
  
Half an hour later, Ikram heard cries. Hungry pining, like lost cubs. Like younglings. His feet stilled, and even though Minudz couldn’t possibly make those sounds, he approached the noisy copse of ten-foot bamboo.  
  
"Get off me, you little leech," a familiar voice said, Blixtek. "Keep these things rutting quiet."  
  
The wailing increased. _Why would Blixtek have children?_  
  
Ikram pushed caution over a cliff and parted the stiff leafy stalks.  
  
A head of shaggy, mud brown hair leaned over a wagon of blankets, its hands fussing with something underneath the blankets. _Minudz._ Ikram stepped through the bamboo and toward the human.  
  
An arrowhead glinted. Blixtek held her bow taut, aimed at his chest. "Ikram!"  
  
_Whoops._  
  
Blixtek lowered her bow. "I could have killed you!" she scolded.  
  
Ikram didn't respond. He sidled around the wagon and lifted Minudz off the ground by the waist. He buried his head in its neck and breathed in deep.  
  
_Mine._  
  
No, it didn't smell right. Milk and mashed roots and fats. Minudz’ aroma of medicinal spices lived far, far beneath. He set it down. Minudz smiled at him, wide and flat-toothed, and offered forward a wriggling bundle.  
  
"What—?" Ikram started to sign, but as he did, Minudz shoved the bundle into his questioning hands.  
  
Ikram’s eyes drifted to the thing in the blanket. Big hazel eyes stared back at him, with chubby muted green cheeks and folded ears.  
  
A half-orc youngling, two months old at best.  
  
Minudz signed, "Did you sleep well?"  
  
The rolling wagon’s blankets squirmed too. Three more babies lay there, swaddled except for their tiny upturned noses and gummy mouths. A toddler, older than the wagon babes, was latched to Blixtek's leg. As she stowed her bow, the toddler's hands gripped onto the orcmaid’s trousers. Its cheeks were wet with sopping tears, and a floppy reed hat rested lopsided on its head.  
  
Minudz touched Ikram's cheek, making him turn back again.  
  
Ikram tried to find his voice. _Five_ halfies? “Where did these come from?" he asked.  
  
Blixtek snorted. Ikram blushed; if Lente were here, there’d be a crudely-rendered speech on procreation.  
  
"A town at the border," Minudz signed.  
  
"What did it say?" Blixtek asked. "Because that didn't seem like enough words. Did it mention it stole these from a humie church? Past the border of the Wicked Kingdoms, where we can’t follow. We can’t even put them back."  
  
Kren rustled through the bamboo, pulling the arm of a young half-orc girl behind him.  
  
Ikram’s mouth popped open. "Six?!" The baby in Ikram's arms started crying. Minudz took the bundle back and bounced it. _Six half-orc younglings._  
  
"Your human keeps holding the younglings so it doesn't have to answer questions," Kren said. His face lived somewhere between amusement and irritation.  
  
Ikram looked at Minudz. Its brown eyes were locked on the quieting baby, but a mischievous smile played on the corner of its mouth.  
  
"Did you bring anyone else?" Kren asked.  
  
Ikram nodded. "Djakka and Lente."  
  
Kren’s brows raised. "Lente? The prankster?"  
  
"Chieftess insisted."  
  
"Good. We need help. We're approaching Riverside territory." Blixtek's hand rested on the toddler's head as she searched the beyond area with her eyes. "And we need more food. They're always hungry. Bottomless pits."  
  
"I have a little gold." Ikram patted his purse. "We can exchange with towns."  
  
"Good," Kren said. He latched the other small child directly to the cart. She was an olive-green girl with messy puffy pigtails. In Westish, he lectured the child, "<Do not run off again, little Adelaide.>"  
  
What kind of name was Adelaide?  
  
"Hush!" Blixtek put her hand up. She took the toddler's hand and passed it to Kren, as her ears perked toward the bamboo. "That better be Djakka and that other dipshit," she whispered, as she raised her bow again.  
  
Ikram heard the footsteps too. Minudz tucked the baby back in the wagon and pulled a thick canvas over them. Ikram drew a knife and stepped forward.  
  
"Ikram?" Djakka asked.  
  
"Yes, Leader."  
  
Behind the stalks, Djakka motioned for Lente to lower his weapon.  
  
Lente grumbled, "I should get to shoot him at least a little, for running off like that."  
  
One of the babies cried, and canvas ruffled before it was quieted.  
  
"What's back there?" Djakka asked. "Gods-damn it Ikram, no more pets."  
  
Ikram put his hands forward as Djakka pushed through the bamboo. Overhead, opaque leaves waved from the movement, and light streamed through from the morning sky. The toddler whined as Kren pulled the wagon backward.  
  
"<Quiet, Milo,>" Kren murmured. The wagon’s wheels creaked over bamboo roots.  
  
Djakka watched with wide-eyed mounting fury as he stared over Ikram’s shoulder.  
  
Ikram put his face in the line of anger. "Leader, remember. You promised we'd retrieve Minudz. "  
  
"I did not promise to escort halfie brats around the Afterlands. Kren! Blex!"  
  
Blixtek stood with her chin up. Kren bowed his head. "Leader."  
  
Djakka turned, shoulders tense. "I thought you were dead, you selfish cur. No word for two months, and I find you playing hut-parents in Riverside territory."  
  
"We were following your orders," Kren said. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword. "'Get the human back safely.'"  
  
"That did not include a pair of halfie children. Where in the Seven Realms did you get them?"  
  
Blixtek muttered, "He hasn't seen under the canvas."  
  
Kren said, "As ranking officer, I made the call to escort them all."  
  
"What's under the canvas?" Lente asked.  
  
"Leave the halfies here," Djakka commanded. "We're not coddling them all the way back to our mountain."  
  
"No," Ikram said. Eyes swung to him, Kren’s and Blixtek’s wide with shock. Minudz smirked. Ikram pressed his chin up and his shoulders back in defiance.  
  
"Excuse me?" Djakka's voice dropped low and dangerous.  
  
"You want to know where the pearl is?" Ikram said. Two fingers pointed to the sky. "She spat it out, past the edge of the world. Past the Iron Tide, past the ocean, in the place where gods die. I saw where. You could spend a thousand lifetimes searching, and you'd never find it unless she showed you."  
  
"Wait, Leader," Lente said. "You buy into this moon bullshit? He's insane. I spent two months denwatching with this crazy little human rutter, carving moons everywhere and spouting out nonsense."  
  
Minudz crossed its fist at Lente and signed as many curses as it could one-handed.  
  
Djakka loomed over Ikram. "I do not like this side of you. I want my soldier back."  
  
"You'll have him," Ikram said. "After we get back to our village."  
  
"Quiet," Kren hushed them both.  
  
"And you!" Djakka whirled on Kren. "You're my second. How dare—"  
  
An arrow whizzed through the woods and speared Djakka’s shoulder. Blood spattered the canvas. A human war-cry echoed around them. Djakka returned with a bellow, drawing his sword.  
  
Kren waved his hands in the air, empty, screaming in Westish: "<Wait! Don’t shoot!>"  
  
Djakka shoved Kren to the side. A thrown black dagger just missed Kren’s stomach, embedding into the splintering cart wood. Adelaide and Milo screamed, unintelligible Westish. Blixtek pushed the child and the toddler behind the wagon, and her body. Sharp eyes surveyed the rustling bamboo and the trees beyond. "Four. Humans," Blixtek said. “Red wizard. Blue djulid.” She loaded an arrow and let fly through the loose stalks.  
  
A second enemy arrow deflected off the thin metal plates stitched to Djakka’s hide armor. His eyes reddened and his shoulder bled. More arrows flew as Djakka drew his sword.  
  
One enemy human wore cream-and-blue priest's robes, a large icon resting like a shield on his chest. Lente fired back, and his arrow plunged into the priest's belly, just below the icon.  
  
A knight in plate mail swung a broadsword in a high overhead arc at Djakka. A rogue in black leather flanked Djakka with the knight, her knives swirling like silver mist. Djakka yelled for help, "Kren! Assist!"  
  
"<We don't want to fight!>" Kren shouted. "<Please!>"  
  
"Where are these damn arrows—" Lente cussed in elvish, the same strange phrase from denwatching as he tried to help Djakka. The rogue sliced Lente’s arrow in two, mid-air.  
  
Green light caught Ikram’s eye, glinting from the fingertips of a red-robed spellcaster. His book rose, his fingers twirled. A green cloud formed in the air, then hurtled toward Djakka.  
  
The cord on Ikram's knife snapped. His arm drew back without consideration, and his weapon flung for the green light.  
  
The spell exploded on Ikram’s blade, shattered into pieces. Bamboo leaves burst into flames as a thousand tiny missiles misfired. The atrocity blade fell in countless shards to the ground below.  
  
"Kren!" Djakka shouted. "My flank!"  
  
Kren's eyes were locked on the priest, whose sky-blue robes boasted a pool of blood from Lente’s arrow. "<Please.>"  
  
The wizard started to prepare another spell. Ikram drew another knife.  
  
And dropped it. He looked to his arm in shock. An arrow protruded halfway through his forearm, muted tan feathers on its fletching. He followed the direction of the fletch to brush overgrowth, where the bamboo thinned in favor of flat-leaf trees. Out of the corner of his eye, metal flashed.  
  
There was a fifth human. The archer. “Five!”  
  
Ikram drew another knife, with his left hand, and a second arrow pinned through his wrist. His nerves screamed. A third hit his chest, lodged in his hide armor, and Ikram stumbled backward. The breath had left his lungs, let loose by the tan fletching, and he dropped to his knees. He could see Minudz desperately trying to move the bulky wagon, over jutting bamboo roots. The wheels stuck on roots and downed stalks, and Minudz pushed and shoved and failed to move the cart, panic in its brown eyes. The canvas-covered babies cried, disturbed and frightened.  
  
With his teeth, Ikram broke the arrow shafts off in his arms, and shoved his wrists through the spokes of the stuck wheel. He lifted the wagon. It tilted, but didn’t budge. Minudz wouldn’t be able to lift this. Ikram looked around the cove, searching for someone, anyone to help.  
  
Blixtek crouched near the children, an arrow drawn but unfired. The rogue moved too fast, and she might hit Djakka. "Blixtek!" Ikram called.  
  
She took two steps, shying the younglings away from the skirmish and toward the cart. She pointed to the arrow in his hide armor. "You—Your chest."  
  
Blood seeped, but all he felt was creeping cold.  
  
“It’s fi—”  
  
Air exploded between their heads, rainbow colors in Blixtek’s rope braids as she turned away. Balls of solid magic hit Ikram's exposed flesh, his head and arms. His skin burned, blistering. The canvas jostled. Multicolored fires fizzled on the thick fabrics, leaving scorched holes. Three chubby fingers poked out.  
  
Someone—Djakka—yelled. Minudz pulled the black dagger from the wagon’s wood and spun. The human prayed, a soft yellow light pulsing in the stone at its chest, and leapt on the leather-dressed rogue. The dagger buried in her chest as Minudz wrapped its arms around her shoulders.  
  
Djakka bled from his forearm, flinging hot blood on pale bamboo. With his off hand, he shoved away the incoming blade of the knight, opening him for a counterstrike. “My dead grandmother hits harder than you!”  
  
Minudz ripped the dagger from the rogue’s chest, then sunk it in again. Was it killing that human? He couldn’t stay to see.  
  
Ikram whispered at Blixtek. "We have to run."  
  
Blixtek's muscles tightened as she grabbed two corners of the wagon and hoisted. The wagon lifted over the roots, the wheels hanging uselessly in the air. The two orcs took off, jogging with the wagon carried between them. The leashed children followed, snatched along by the belts as Blixtek and Ikram escaped through the thin forest along deer paths.  
  
Fire exploded into the morning sky. Lente whooped, sounding far away already. An orcish war-cry, from an unfamiliar voice, undulated through the trees. Another warparty must be near.  
  
Ikram focused on his feet, trying not to trip, as his wrists bled onto the wooden spokes of the wheel. Milo stumbled. Blixtek scooped up his leash and he dangled until he managed to grab onto her back. His straw hat fell away.  
  
_“IF EVER WE BE BEAT, WE’RE HARD TO KILL AND TOUGH TO EAT."_  
  
_Riversiders. _They might kill the humans, but they’d kill Djakka too. Any orc in disputed territory was an enemy, especially warriors. Blixtek faltered. Ikram finally risked a glance back. No one followed, yet.__  
  
"We should—" Blixtek started.  
  
Ikram shook his head. "They’ll kill all of us. Especially halfies."  
  
Adelaide puffed, breathless, as she pulled on the knot of her leash. "<Miss Bliss, I’m stuck.>"  
  
"I can’t understand you!" Blixtek shouted.  
  
Adelaide’s eyes reddened.  
  
"Shh—" Ikram insisted to Blixtek. He lowered the wagon slightly. Adelaide stepped onto the spokes so her hands could grip the lip. Blixtek’s ears twitched angrily.  
  
They moved faster, with the children not dragging along. Darkness lingered at the edge of Ikram’s eyes, but they ran until they reached water. Thirty feet across, rushing angrily after summer rain.  
  
"We need a bridge," Blixtek said. She glanced at the four babies under the canvas, then set Milo on the ground.  
  
"We're trapped," Ikram said.  
  
"<What's going on, Miss Bliss?>" the child asked.  
  
"I don't understand what she's saying." Blixtek pinched the bridge of her nose. "Get it through your thick skull, kid, I don't speak Westish."  
  
Ikram bent down the child's level. "<No worry. We protect.>"  
  
"Since when do you speak Westish?" Blixtek asked.  
  
Ikram shrugged. "Denwatching."  
  
For once in his life, Blixtek looked impressed with him.  
  
The next moment, she bent back the canvas where the swaddled infants lay. She checked the eyes of each, prodded their round cheeks. They quieted as she stuck round knobs of leather in their mouths, taken from Minudz’ stowed pack. The babies suckled, little dimples appearing in two of the chubby faces. The other two clutched each other with tiny green-tinted fingers.  
  
Blixtek smiled at them. Her eyes flicked up to Ikram, and he looked away quickly.  
  
"I know you're judging me, asshole," she muttered.  
  
"Let's find some brush to cover the cart," Ikram said.  
  
"We left our party. We're disgraced now," Blixtek said. "Chieftess'll have us executed."  
  
Ikram shook his head, dizzy and light with blood loss, then gathered branches into his arms with limited use of his hands. "Put these over the cart. Hide the children while I take a rope across."  
  
Blixtek stared at him. "I think you're forgetting something." She pointed to his chest.  
  
He looked down to see the arrow again, sticking out of his hide armor. It wasn't so deep, but blood seeped around the thick leathers, matting his chest hair. Probably ruining his new denwatching scars.  
  
He snapped the shaft, and pain shot through his ribs. His vision wavered. "Right." He blinked to try to focus his eyes. "I'll stay with the younglings, and you take the rope across." He pulled the rope from his pack with blood-soaked hands and passed it to Blixtek.  
  
Blixtek herded the children beneath the bushes and covered the cart with branches. Ikram sank at the base of the nearest tree, his head lolling. Blixtek muttered, "I’ll be back. Keep looking dead."  
  
"<Mr. Orc, you're bleeding,>" Adelaide said. The arrow didn't hurt so bad, not when compared to pumping air into his chest a few months ago. Just numb.  
  
"<My name is Ikram.>"  
  
"<I'm Adelaide, and this is Milo.>"  
  
"<Milo,>" Milo repeated.  
  
"<My name is Ikram.>"  
  
"<You already said that,>" Adelaide said.  
  
"<You look tired,>" Milo said.  
  
"<No worry,>" he told them. "<I can stay awake for a very long time. But quiet now. We hide.>"  
  
The children quieted. Gentle breathing from the cart and small suckles were all the noise the babies made. He hoped they had more orc in them than human. Hezzik once said human babies were loud.  
  
Ikram broke the cord of his next knife with difficulty and forced his shaking fingers to curl around the hilt. His grip was loose, but he could get in one shot, if he needed to.  
  
He prayed that would be enough.  
  
#


	18. Across

Ikram stayed dead still as a Riverside patrol thundered along the wide slope of the river bank. Blixtek had swum to the other side, the thick rope hanging in the water. Maybe they wouldn't notice the thick twine bobbing in the current. Maybe they wouldn’t notice him either, with shallow half-dead breathing and blood everywhere.  
  
Maybe all fifteen orcs in the warparty wouldn't notice.  
  
Ikram counted four shamans through heavy lidded eyes. _Four,_ in one warparty. Riversiders must be plucking shamans off trees and growing them in their fields. Maybe they had a school like the human kingdoms.  
  
A foul stench crept into the air. Wet, mucky shit.  
  
"Uhh—<Mister Orc Ikram?>" Adelaide said.  
  
One of the babies let out a small, fussy cry.  
  
Three Riversiders returned, with cautious footsteps toward the new noise. They'd been so close, almost safe, and now the younglings wanted to cry?  
  
Ikram pulled back the canvas and plucked up the crying infant. He sniffed its swaddle and gagged. It smelled worse than shit, and Ikram considered ripping out his septum ring and letting his nose fill with blood instead.  
  
The baby wailed louder. Its folded ears flared.  
  
Three Riverside orcs jogged closer, muttering to each other.  
  
"What's a baby doing around here?"  
  
"Mountain lions make that same noise."  
  
"I've heard lions. That's a baby."  
  
"<Very Quiet,>" Ikram whispered to Adelaide and Milo, hidden under brush. They watched him wide-eyed and nodded. Adelaide bit her lip as Ikram pulled the canvas back over the others. "<Minudz will find you.>"  
  
Ikram held the infant to his chest, crept out of the brush, then bolted for the river. If he could get this baby across, Blixtek could take it. She could lead the Riversiders away from the others. Ikram’s feet sloshed in the shallow water, and he aimed for a small island. His vision narrowed, darkness creeping in as his head grew too light. The Riversiders followed, shouting at him.  
  
"Wasn’t that guy dead?"  
  
"What's that smell?"  
  
The baby wailed, bouncing with every step. Ikram's forearms held tight against it, his hands too loose to even keep the grip on his knife. Water splashed the infant. Ikram’s vision narrowed to tunnels.  
  
A ceramic-tipped arrow skimmed his hair just as Ikram reached the gnarled roots of the island. He ducked behind the island’s tree and balanced delicately on the rocks stuck between years-old roots.  
  
An arrow thudded into the algae-covered bark. His vision recovered, with every heartbeat.  
  
He poked his head out. The three Riversiders watched him, one bowman and two swordsmen. They could easily wade through the water, but the gnarled roots offered him a small terrain advantage.  
  
If he could move his arms.  
  
If he didn't have a stinking, crying youngling.  
  
"Trespasser, what are you doing with a baby?"  
  
"Or a lion."  
  
"It's not a lion."  
  
"Could be a baby lion."  
  
Ikram unwrapped the baby's swaddle—hopelessly soiled—and tried rinsing the cloth in the river one-handed. The current snatched the cloth away. The naked pale-green boy squirmed in the crook of Ikram’s elbow. Ikram cupped water and tried to wash the brown mess from its back.  
  
The baby howled and started peeing. Warm liquid dripped down Ikram's leg.  
  
"Seriously, baby?" Ikram muttered. He rinsed the remainder with his hand and dried it with his shirt. His head felt light, filled with air and wobbly on his neck. Splinters of the snapped arrow poked out of his chest armor.  
  
The arrow couldn't be that deep, or he'd be dead.  
  
"What are you doing to it?" a Riversider asked.  
  
"Cleaning it," Ikram shouted back. "It soiled its blanket and now it peed on me."  
  
The Riversiders laughed.  
  
Ikram muttered something unkind about their sisters.  
  
"Why'd you bring a baby through disputed territory? Are you dumb?"  
  
"Very dumb," Ikram said. "Dumb and moon mad." He rocked the baby over his shoulder as it quieted, pushing warmth into its back with his limp hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to picture the moon on the back of his eyelids.  
  
She wasn't there.  
  
"I'm going to come over there and kill you now," a Riversider shouted.  
  
Ikram hummed to the baby. His eyes darted over the fast-moving river, with little white wakes. Even shallow, bank-to-bank was wide. There was likely a channel in the middle where the current ripped through, especially around this tree's island.  
  
A Riversider swordsman sloshed through the water in high boots.  
  
"What are you going to do with my baby?" Ikram asked. His feet worked to pull off his boots as he stripped down. His belt dropped with all his knives to the stones below. His sister’s gifts would weigh him down.  
  
"Drown it, probably. The river's right here."  
  
Ikram pulled off his hide armor over the arrow’s remaining splinters. His undershirt was soaked with blood and water. He packed the leather around the baby, like a carrier, as the swordsman came closer.  
  
"You're stupid, Tekk. Now he's gonna fight you."  
  
But he wasn't going to fight. The baby wailed, and Ikram jumped.  
  
Water rushed his ears as he swam. The Riversiders shouted, the swordsman slashed the water, but everything was muted as the river swept him down. The wounds in his forearm stung and his chest burned.  
  
When his feet hit the bank, he swung the baby back around to his front.  
  
It cried. Wailed and cried and peed again, all over his hide armor. But it cried. It hadn't drowned. Its legs kicked and arms flailed.  
  
Strong little one. Alive.  
  
On elbows and knees, with dripping hair, Ikram wobbled to a stand.  
  
An arrow hit Ikram’s calf, and he saw it bust through the other side, but he could barely feel the pain as he pushed himself behind a tree on the other bank.  
  
He poked his head out to look at the Riversiders, and another arrow sailed past. The two swordsmen were swimming across, paddling with their heads above the water.  
  
Ikram stood on unstable legs, pushing against the tree. His trousers clung to his legs. His shot leg collapsed under him, and another arrow sailed past, skimming his arm.  
  
The baby wailed harder as he huddled with it.  
  
"Shh, Shh. Don't worry," Ikram whispered. He tried to wipe the baby's eyes, get some of the water off.  
  
The sloshing of the approaching swordsmen amplified. The baby quieted just a little, looking at Ikram with watery blue eyes. How rare. Blue-eyed orcs were blessed by the Realm of Water, neighbor to the Garden. Perhaps the youngling would return there soon.  
  
"Sorry, little one," Ikram said. "You don't want sisters anyway. Believe me."  
  
He tucked the baby's head into his neck and waited for the swing of a sword.


	19. Leftovers

Ikram crouched behind the pine, his eyes closed as heavy footsteps approached. The youngling smelled beautiful, like new leaves and crushed sunflower seeds. For a final living moment, this was a good one. Maybe the other children would live. Maybe he'd bought enough time. Maybe if he died the moon would leave him alone.  
  
The swordsman’s footsteps stopped. The swing didn't come, not even the breeze of a passing blade, as a hundred heartbeats passed.  
  
"Hey," Blixtek whispered. Ikram opened his eyes. Blixtek crouched in front of him, weapons away, her face open. He glanced right, where he’d last heard the swordsman.  
  
The Riversider lay on the ground, three arrows through his neck.  
  
Blixtek held out her arms. "Pass him here." Her fingers curled around the baby's naked body, and Ikram's muscles tensed.  
  
"Mine," he croaked.  
  
"Yeah, yeah. We get it." Blixtek rolled her eyes. "You get mated and suddenly babies are super cute. You can't have six. That's dumb." She coaxed the baby from Ikram's arms and rocked it.  
  
Ikram looked around. This side of the river had fewer bamboo sprouts. Twisting mint plants covered the space between trees. "Where are the others?"  
  
"Kren and Lente are taking the wagon across. Kren thinks he can fix the wheel."  
  
"Are the Riversiders dead?"  
  
Blixtek paused a moment. Her chin jutted forward, exposing her tusks in a begrudging smile. "That dipshit prankster has eagle eyes with those elven bows. I still hate him though."  
  
Ikram tried to look upstream but couldn't see past the tree. As he twisted, his chest and leg screamed and his breath caught in this throat. He tried to reach for the arrow still stuck in his calf, but his hands didn't respond. His chest seeped blood steadily toward his belly button.  
  
Blixtek shouted over her shoulder, "Djulid! Quicker is better."  
  
Seconds or hours later, Ikram couldn't tell, Minudz appeared in front of him soaked to the bone. Its shaggy, sopping hair dripped onto Ikram’s legs. Its shirt was tinted pink with rinsed blood. Minudz dropped its bag down and prodded Ikram's bare and bleeding chest.  
  
"Just scratches," Ikram mumbled.  
  
Minudz rolled its eyes and pressed its icon to its forehead. The yellow glow coursed from the stone into Ikram’s skin, and the fibers of his muscles vibrated as they tried to string themselves back together. Ikram’s breathing steadied, and his heartbeat simmered back to normal. Minudz rifled through its pack, for leaves and paste and crushed bark. It tied the bandage to his chest and eyed the arrow through his calf.  
  
The mud-eyed human touched the arrow shaft, and Ikram jumped. A very un-warrior-like squeal escaped him, and the human snorted. Its hand rested on Ikram’s knee, mischief playing in its eyes.  
  
Blixtek nudged the human with her boot as she rocked the baby. "Don't dick around, little djulid. We still gotta move."  
  
In half a second, Minudz snatched the arrow through his calf with no warning. Ikram couldn't breathe. His leg bones felt cold and out of place and he smacked his head against the tree.  
  
_Garden sod,_ he couldn’t even get through one skirmish without half-dying… Maybe Minudz was _bad_ luck.  
  
For a second, Ikram could see the starless sky, and the moon at the center with her cosmic sword. _Not dead yet,_ she whispered.  
  
The healing rush ran through him again, a blur of gold and ecstasy. His skin stitched together, not just on his calf and chest, but his forearms as well, and on his scalp where the Riversider arrow had skimmed him.  
  
Minudz tried to lift Ikram up, though the tree was more help. He realized how unclothed he was, barefoot and bare-chested. Unarmed.  
  
"I need my belt," he said.  
  
The island was near the other bank, upriver. He moved toward it, testing his newly healed calf. Barely a twinge. Even his lung felt better, full and capable. He hadn’t realized that wound still pained him until the ache left, dissipated in gold magic.  
  
Minudz grabbed him by the ear between piercings. Ikram turned back. The human signed, "I missed you."  
  
Ikram glanced at Blixtek, but she couldn't understand orcsign any better than the baby could. He asked, "Why did you leave?"  
  
Minudz hands twitched, its jaw opened and closed like a dying fish.  
  
"Don’t lie," Ikram said.  
  
It finally signed, "I'm not safe."  
  
"You know that I'll protect you." Right after he retrieved his weapons belt.  
  
"No. No one is safe with me. I had to leave."  
  
"Boarshit," Ikram signed, definitively quick. "You had a reason, or you'd have stayed, like you did in the winter. You risked being corrupted again. Tell me why."  
  
"I thought the priests could help me. They could close my mind, but they refused. I am not of their god."  
  
"They can do that?" Human priests could fix its head?  
  
The river splashed. From around the tree, Djakka shook himself off, his dark hair curling into rings as he walked toward them. After a few sloshing steps, he shoved Ikram's discarded boots and belts into his hands.  
  
"Thanks, Leader."  
  
Minudz signed a thank you, too. Djakka scoffed and moved on.  
  
Blixtek rocked the baby, taking a half step behind Minudz, out of Djakka’s view. Ikram pulled on his boots and belt, shook out his hide armor, wrung out his shirt.  
  
"Let's go," Djakka called.  
  
Ikram stumbled forward and counted his knives. Two gone. The ceramic egg was still in the pouch along with a few coins. "Blixtek, is there a village nearby? The babies need food."  
  
"Can’t even photosynthesize," Djakka muttered. "Half-blood pups turn my own warriors against me, and now we have to stop for food?"  
  
Ikram's jaw clenched. "Leader—"  
  
Djakka whirled. "No more excuses. You cannot adopt every desperate creature. We have a purpose."  
  
"What purpose?" Ikram challenged. "It’s time. Tell us all what we’re looking for."  
  
"You know what I seek."  
  
"No. I know where it is. You've led us for a year, and we know nothing. We follow, like cattle for slaughter."  
  
Djakka's shoulders straightened, and his height grew. His nostrils flared. "I ought to kill every one of these useless halfies for your backtalk."  
  
Ikram’s eyes narrowed. "Don’t threaten them. They are mine."  
  
"They are not yours. They belong to no one."  
  
"I claim them. I claim them all." His chest puffed, displaying his mildly-damaged denwatching scars, and the blood he’d just spilled.  
  
"And who will raise them? You swore your blades to me."  
  
Ikram couldn't answer. He stood, fists clenched and clothes wet, his mind blank.  
  
"Idiot," Djakka muttered. He shoved past Ikram and Minudz, toward where Kren adjusted the wagon. "Soft-hearted stupid man."  
  
"You are the dumbest orc I ever met," Blixtek said.  
  
The blue-eyed babe over her shoulder was now wrapped in a dry cloth. It pressed up to stare at Ikram, folded ears and large eyes. _Feyak Fallow, child of Ikram._ The name echoed in Ikram’s mind, bubbling from some unknown depths there.  
  
Blixtek sighed and stepped past Ikram as well. "Come. Let's get this one back to his twin."  
  
Ikram nodded and stepped forward. With Blixtek facing away, he walked beside Minudz. He signed, "Where did the children come from?"  
  
The human raised its eyebrows and signed, "Rutting, probably."  
  
Ikram shoved its shoulder, and it grinned as it faux-stumbled. Ikram signed, "Where? What village? And why did you take them? Are you kin?"  
  
Minudz pinched its lips. "Not kin. They were—I don't know the orcish word—leftovers? No family."  
  
"Dead family?"  
  
"Probably not. Their parents did not like the children."  
  
"What parents like their children? None."  
  
"The parents left these children alone."  
  
"Sure." Ikram shrugged. Younglings were often left alone. “What were you going to do with them?”  
  
Minudz signed, “They could be part of the village.”  
  
"Our tribe can make our own children. We don't need to steal them."  
  
"They were left forever at a church to be raised by priests."  
  
"Because their family was massacred."  
  
"No! Because they were not wanted. Some humans keep their half-orc offspring, and some abandon them. I saw these, and I could not let them grow up there. They will be happier in a community. With us."  
  
"They will not be able to match the other children of our tribe. They are too small."  
  
"They will grow."  
  
"Will you grow?" Ikram asked. He looked down, the human a head shorter. Minudz' brows scrunched angrily.  
  
"You're pissing me off."  
  
"Good." Ikram grinned. "I wanted to."  
  
"Rut you," the human signed.  
  
Ikram leaned toward the human’s face, grin wide. "When?"  
  
Minudz blushed, arms clamped to its sides. Ikram tried to see if its ears turned red, but the tips were covered by that mop of dark brown hair. Like fallen leaves. Like firewood. He reached forward, to move its hair away from its ears.  
  
"Hey! No!" Blixtek yelled. "Absolutely not. Ikram, stop looking at the human like that. One of you, come clean the girl one. She smells like piss."  
  
Minudz skipped forward, picked up Feyak’s soiled twin, and smiled with flat teeth at the babe.  
  
The wagon wheels creaked as they continued on a path, the four babes and Milo laying in the wooden cradle. Ahead, Lente cleared low brush with a long straight knife, humming a silly tune.  
  
Ikram followed, but his mind drifted to the idea of leftover children. Did human communities not take care of their neighbors' young? And why would anyone ever leave a child in the care of shamans? A house of worship was no place to learn about the world. Even Kren, child of Shaman Monten, spent all his young days with Blixtek and Ikram. Appeasing gods was a chore for adults.  
  
Adelaide peered back at him, leashed about her middle to the cart. She waved. "<Hello, Mister Ikram. I'm glad you're okay.>"  
  
"I'm glad you're safe, too, little one," Ikram said.  
  
"<What?>"  
  
"<Please practice Orcish with me?>" Ikram said. "Hello. My name is Adelaide."  
  
She repeated, "My name is Adelaide."  
  
#


	20. Cauliflower

In the next village, Kren and Minudz haggled for food from farmer stalls. Ikram followed with Milo on one hip and his coin purse on the other, while Adelaide held onto Ikram's free hand and practiced her new vocabulary. Her head came up to his thigh, caught in that strange round age between chubby toddler and lanky child.  
  
"There are potatoes," she said. "Potatoes are brown and orange."  
  
"Do you like potatoes?" Ikram asked.  
  
"Potatoes are delicious."  
  
Kren muttered to Ikram, "This is why Djakka volunteered to stay with the babies. They don't talk. You need to teach her another verb."  
  
Ikram snorted. "Why don't you? My Westish is shit."  
  
"Shit!" Milo echoed. His little hands pulled on Ikram's septum piercing as he leaned away. "Shit. Shit."  
  
_Sodding piercings._ Ikram’s eyes watered as one hand flew up to grab Milo’s wrist. "Shh, shh, <quiet> Milo." Ikram peeled Milo’s chubby fingers off the metal bolt, then moved the boy to his other hip.  
  
"Shit!" Milo shouted. His teeth showed all the way to the back, including his rounded uppers.  
  
"<Don't say> shit, Milo. <It's a bad word,>" Adelaide chastised.  
  
"That is exactly why he likes it," Kren said. A hint of a smirk played on his lips.  
  
Adelaide released Ikram's hand and bounced forward to help Minudz touch the produce. Long white radishes and purple root bulbs and garlic passed under her fingers. She stopped as Minudz picked up a cream-tinted brassica. "<I don't want cauliflower,>" she said.  
  
"That's too bad," Minudz signed and collected the bunch anyway. Adelaide clamped her hands to her side, stomped her feet, and gave a loud fake wail.  
  
"What is she doing?" Ikram asked. "What is wrong with her?"  
  
Adelaide flopped to the ground. People stared, humans, orcs, and elves alike.  
  
"Shit!" Milo screamed.  
  
Minudz signed, "Ignore them."  
  
"It's just a tantrum," Kren said. "She'll get tired."  
  
Ikram sucked on his lower teeth as Adelaide reached pitches that hurt his ears. The produce merchant, a barrel-chested human, raised his eyebrows and shook his head.  
  
Ikram prodded Adelaide with the toe of his boot.  
  
"<I don't want cauliflower!>" she screamed.  
  
"I will eat the <cauliflower,>" Ikram said.  
  
Adelaide hiccupped. "Huh?"  
  
Ikram repeated himself more slowly. The girl quieted to listen. "Do you understand?" he asked.  
  
Adelaide stood and gestured for Ikram to bend down. When he did, she positioned her face inches from his and shouted, "<I don't want cauliflower!>"  
  
Ikram jerked back. His free hand shot out, around her waist, and picked the girl up off the ground. She screamed and cried, pinned to the opposite hip of Milo, and flailed her limbs uselessly.  
  
Kren said, "We told you to ignore her."  
  
"I will take her somewhere else to calm down," Ikram said. Kren's older brother, Hezzik, used to do the same for Ikram, especially when he was fighting with his sisters.  
  
He started walking with a heavy, lopsided gait, only to have Kren stop him and pluck the purse from his hip. Ikram aimed toward the path away from the little village, passing stares from human farmers and bread-makers and wide-eyed human children. He soon found a secluded place on the edge of a farm. A pile of jagged, broken wood lay nearby, the remnants of some demolished structure.  
  
He set Milo down first, then Adelaide. Her wailing quieted to sniffles, but she still had streaks of tears running down her face.  
  
Ikram tried to wipe her face with his knuckle. "Why are you crying?"  
  
"<What?>" she asked.  
  
"<Why are you sad?>"  
  
Adelaide shrugged. "<I don't know.>"  
  
Milo interjected, "Shit!"  
  
"Quiet, Milo." Ikram hushed the boy, who seconds later started to wail. At least Adelaide had stopped. "Are you hungry?"  
  
Milo nodded. The boy had started to pick up Orcish well, even though he didn’t speak much. Ikram plucked out a small sack of nuts and dried berries from inside his armor. Milo snatched the bag and shoved his grubby hands directly in.  
  
"<I want some,>" Adelaide insisted.  
  
"Can you ask in Orcish?"  
  
"Give me some food," she said. Ikram took the bag from Milo, poured some into his palm, and passed the snack into Adelaide’s outstretched hand. She sat on wood and daintily ate out her favorite berries. Milo crushed the nuts into his mouth by the handful. Ikram wondered how he didn't choke.  
  
"<Why aren't they scared of us here?>" Adelaide asked.  
  
Ikram paused. "<Scared? You are very little.>"  
  
"<No.>" She rolled her hazel eyes. "<Why aren’t they scared of orcs here?>"  
  
"This is a support town. Since fields in the Afterlands are difficult to tend, all lawful clans leave support towns alone. The next year's crops are ensured, no one starves, and clans can use more people to defend."  
  
"<Too many words,>" Adelaide complained. "<I stopped listening.>"  
  
"Can you say that in Orcish?"  
  
"<Why do I have to say Orcish all the time. I'm tired of it. Can't you just learn Westish?>"  
  
"People in my village speak Orcish," Ikram said. "We're orcs."  
  
Adelaide swung her green-tinted legs back and forth and kicked the block of wood where she sat. "<I don't want to go. I'm scared of orcs.>"  
  
Boarshit. This child wasn't scared of anything. He asked, "Are you scared of me?"  
  
"<No, but you're not really an orc.>"  
  
"What?" Ikram frowned. "Yes I am." If this was another of Lente's stupid pranks, telling the kids he wasn't really an orc—  
  
"<Not on the inside. On the inside you're human, just like me.>"  
  
Ikram's face pinched as he tried to quell the rising heat in his chest. "I am not human."  
  
"Yes you are," Adelaide insisted.  
  
"You don't get to decide what I am," he snapped, his voice rising. "Where did you learn this nonsense? Did the priests teach you that?" He was not human, and neither was she.  
  
"<You're talking too fast.>" Adelaide complained, at the same time that Milo started to cry.  
  
Mid-wail, the half-orc toddler flailed his little arms and launched the bag of nuts and dried berries onto the debris pile. Ikram breathed deeply, then moved to pick up the bag of nuts. He brushed off the bag and collected the loose nuts that had fallen.  
  
_Human on the inside,_ what a load of boarshit. He popped a handful of loose, dusty nuts in his mouth and bit down. They broke. _Did no one ever tell her she was orc too?_  
  
He breathed and chewed and tried to remember that Adelaide and Milo were very young.  
  
"Let's play a game," he suggested. "Let's run around together. To that tree and back."  
  
"<Are there prizes?>" Adelaide asked.  
  
He grinned. "If you lose, you have to eat <cauliflower.>"  
  
Adelaide's eyes opened wide, and she leapt up from her wooden block. Milo struggled to get down and followed Adelaide toward the wide oak with his waddling run.  
  
Ikram secured his armor and started running too. Soon, they were playing in the summer grasses, finding rollies, and chasing jumping crickets.  
  
Late that evening, Ikram and Minudz named the four youngest around a dying campfire. Both trailed cool dirt on the outer ridges of the younglings’ ears and whispered their new names to them. _Feyak_ and _Pirk_. _Ymir_ and _Guusnock._  
  
With the babes swaddled and cuddling in the wagon, Minudz sat next to Ikram. Its shoulder touched his in the lukewarm night. Minudz signed, “Did I do the right thing? Stealing them?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Ikram signed.  
  
“I couldn’t leave them there.” Minudz signed. “They’d grow up not loved. Not wanted. Hating a part of themselves. They’d grow up killing orcs.”  
  
“I don’t know what to do.” Ikram felt a weight descend over his head. He never knew what to do. Not with Djakka, not with the moon.  
  
“We’ll raise them.” Minudz signed. “They’ll be good for the mountain. We’d be good parents.”  
  
“I can’t. I have to lead Djakka past the edge of the world. That’s no place for children.”  
  
Minudz started to sign, then folded its hands. It stared pensively into the coals. The stars were dim, the moon only a sliver through the trees.  
  
She didn’t comment.  
  
#


	21. Redistribution

In the past ten days of travel, the wagon’s wheel had long since broken. Now, the adults took turns carrying the babies, and sometimes Milo or Adelaide when they tired. Summer sun warmed them all as they walked. Fields of tall grasses coated hills near well-worn roads, but Kren insisted they stay clear of anyplace well-traveled.  
  
He said, “Just because a place is not in dispute does not make it safe.”  
  
“You’d have us avoid a mouse,” Lente said.  
  
“Mice spread disease.”  
  
They trekked on animal trails through itchy fields of growing maize and low peas, taking what they needed along the way. Blixtek or Lente scouted ahead, scaring off whatever creatures might still be lurking on their path. Lente often returned with full cheeks.  
  
“Leader, there’s a group of orcs marching east.” Lente chewed his mouthful of corn as he spoke. “Just over that ridge.”  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Couple hundred. I didn’t count. Lots of ladies and babies though. Families.” Lente grinned. A half-eaten cob dangled from his hand as he gestured. “Like us!”  
  
“Show me,” Kren said. Lente led Kren and Djakka along his narrow trail.  
  
“What’s going on?” Adelaide asked. Minudz signed the same.  
  
Ikram shrugged.  
  
“Sounds like redistribution,” Blixtek muttered. “Black Spears have been absorbing other clans.”  
  
_Black Spears._ A familiar fear burbled in Ikram’s mind, but he needed to stay calm. Insects buzzed around the corn, and he cradled the pair of younglings strapped to his front. Ymir and Guusnock slept easily against his chest, tied there with long cloth. When clean, their smell calmed him. Minudz held Feyak close.  
  
“Why move people?” Ikram asked. Especially mid-summer, when crops needed tending.  
  
“Resources.” Blixtek’s lips pursed. Thoughts crossed behind her eyes, but she said nothing aloud. She clutched Pirk to her, the twin sister of Feyak.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Minudz signed.  
  
Adelaide and Milo watched the sky. Vultures circled in the distance, dark and foreboding. Did they follow the families, hopefully waiting for their next meal?  
  
“We need to hide,” Blixtek said. Fear lived below her voice, urgent. Ikram obeyed, following her toward the cornfield. Wind rustled the stalks, whispers of the corn talking.  
  
Minudz pulled on Milo’s hand, and tugged Adelaide’s tunic to bring them toward the field. Adelaide resisted, digging her feet into soft dirt.  
  
“She’s going to leave tracks,” Blixtek said.  
  
“Adelaide, <please come.>” Ikram beckoned her from the edge of the field. “<Now.>”  
  
“<We need to wait for Mr. Lente and everyone.>”  
  
Ikram shook his head. “<Kren will find us. Trust me. Kren is the smartest.>”  
  
“<I don’t want to go in the corn.>”  
  
“<We need to hide. There’s danger here.>”  
  
“<I want to go home.>”  
  
“<We’re going home.>”  
  
“<Home?>” Blixtek scoffed. “She means the human town. We can’t go back there. Physically. There’s a barrier that keeps out orcs.”  
  
Minudz signed, “Tell her I’ll take her back, when she’s older. I’ll take her all over the human lands: to White Tower, to West Haven, and Dragon’s Mead, but she has to grow up first.”  
  
“I don’t know how to say all that.” Ikram knelt to look Adelaide in her wide, frustrated eyes. Her hair was braided into pseudo-ropes. Lente’s doing. “<We are going to your new home. You will have a lot of family. And when you are grown, Minudz will take you and Milo to visit all the human places. All of them.>”  
  
Adelaide’s face brightened. “<The Wicked Citadel?>”  
  
“Of course.” Ikram grinned.  
  
Minudz covered its eyes with its palm, face pinched in frustrated silence. It breathed out, then signed one-handed, "Get moving."  
  
"Let’s go hide." Ikram put his hand forward.  
  
Adelaide nodded and took Ikram’s hand. They snuck far into the chest-high maize and pressed down stalks so they could sit easily. With their heads lower than the corn, they could only hear the corn’s whispers and the nearest insects. Minudz and Ikram fed the younglings, while Blixtek scouted some early-ripe ears of sweet corn and showed Milo and Adelaide how to shear the husks.  
  
After eating, Ikram and Blixtek showed the children how to fold husk-dolls. A wary raptor vulture spied them overhead, and they watched it circle.  
  
“I could shoot it,” Blixtek muttered.  
  
Ikram shook his head. “We can’t draw more attention.”  
  
“It might be after one of the younglings.”  
  
“It’ll have to go through me.” He bared his teeth at the long-winged raptor.  
  
Blixtek scoffed. “Did denwatching teach you how to fly, too?”  
  
The corn snapped, crashing, a crescendo in the whispers of the cornfield. Ikram turned, still seated, to stare down the path they’d made. Was something following them?  
  
He almost heard his name, like a warning from the corn.  
  
Lente pushed through the stalks next to their nest. “Ikky!” he shouted. “It’s Kren!”  
  
Lente’s shoulder bled from four jagged claw marks. Ikram stood to look over the maze; a hissing screech wafted over the sharp leaves. _Had the Black Spears found them?_  
  
No.  
  
A shaggy black-and-white beast towered over Djakka. A dire badger, with claws like short swords and paws the size of Djakka’s head, cleaved viciously at the black-haired orc. _Where was Kren?_ Ikram could just make out a shock of red hair near Djakka’s feet, outside the cornfield. Kren lay prone, not moving.   
  
Ikram unhooked the cloth cradles hastily, his hands shaking, then passed Feyak and Pirk to Lente. Lente panted as he struggled to hold them both with his one good arm. Blood from his shoulder seeped onto the youngling’s cloths. He knelt.  
  
Ikram growled, “If that bird comes near my children, kill it.”  
  
“Bird?” Lente asked. He looked up as the vulture’s shadow passed overhead. “Oh.”  
  
Ikram ran. Thick maize slapped against his arms and legs, and his knives knocked against his thighs. A winged shadow passed over the corn as Ikram approached the monstrous badger. The vulture cried overhead, circling, taunting.  
  
It wanted its feast.  
  
#


	22. Badger

Ikram raced out of the cornfield, crushing dropped stalks under his feet until he reached the path between fields. Closer to the edge of a small forest, the dire badger swiped a thick paw at Djakka, its yellow-cream hackles raised. Sharp teeth flung frothy spit.  
  
Djakka dodged long shining claws and stabbed at the creature with a slowing sword. "I’m having...badger stew tonight, you...overgrown chipmunk," Djakka yelled.  
  
Kren lay on the ground, long red hair splayed over crushed plants. _Alive?_ Ikram was still too far to see. The rocky dirt shifted under his feet, the tang of blood filtering into his nostrils.  
  
Djakka’s sword met the badger’s talons with a quick crash, parried. Without Kren at his flank, Djakka’s side was unprotected. The badger had already found this weakness, swiping heavily at the shredded, bloody armor. Ikram could see his leader waning, beaten into the loam.  
  
Ikram cried out an angry wail as he ran. "Fight _ME,_ " he demanded.  
  
The creature raised its head toward him, a side glance as its claws still swiped at Djakka. Djakka breathed heavily, cursing with each wobbling parry. "...sew your pelt…into my…”  
  
Ikram snapped a cord; his blade flew for the badger. The thrown knife hit the badger’s cheek and made a thin, shallow cut. Monstrous yellow eyes met his, bloodshot and furious, as Ikram snapped another cord. He barreled into the creature and tore his second blade into its forearm. His off-hand grasped onto dense, coarse fur.  
  
Claws bit into his leg. The dire badger tried to peel him off its back, but his hand was wrapped tight in its pelt.  
  
Words rolled from his tongue as easy as froth. “Fight! Kill! Die!” He ripped the curve of the blade through the creature’s skin. Hot blood soaked over his fingers. Musk filled his nostrils. The badger snapped at him with jagged teeth the size of his head, long and sharp.  
  
Ikram snapped free his next knife and jammed it into the badger’s muzzle. Whiskers and fur sheared as the blade sunk down.  
  
The creature snarled and squealed, bucking and shaking to throw him off. Its massive paw wedged between them and flung him away. Claws bit into the hide leather armor over his stomach, then left just as quick as he soared through the air.  
  
Ikram landed among peanut plants, uprooted when he launched himself again. His shoulder twinged as he threw a knife. The blade embedded in the badger’s thick neck. He followed shortly after and swiped the creature across the nose.  
  
Its paw hit him across the side. Cold rushed through his hide armor as he jumped up again. The creature planted itself and roared.  
  
Ikram roared too, his eyes red, his tusks bared. "Fight me!"  
  
The badger stepped back and turned to run.  
  
No. Anger coursed through Ikram’s blood with the adrenaline. _You hurt Kren. I will not let you live._ He snapped a cord and threw a blade in the badger’s retreating back, but it didn’t stop. He chased it until the forest edge, where thin naked pines smelled of tangy sap, and leapt. Ikram’s nails gripped the fur of its back; his fingers twisting to create hand holds as he climbed the creature, until he reached its shaggy neck.  
  
It rolled over, pinning Ikram to the ground as he brought his knife to the soft hollow of its jaw. A pulse lived there. _Not for long._  
  
The badger thrashed, its yellowed teeth catching his torso, but Ikram’s armor peeled off. His knife sunk in, slow, with force. He found the pulse, hot and tense, and pressed. _The Garden grows with your blood and my wrath._ Blood drained over him as the creature seized and flailed its dying limbs.  
  
When the dire badger stopped moving, Ikram finally let loose his grip. He wriggled out from beneath the creature. Drenched, he panted. He unsheathed blood-slick knives from the corpse with quick, jerky movements. His heart pounded.  
  
A twig cracked. His head snapped up. Adelaide stood at the field’s edge. Her wide hazel eyes caught his gaze, forced him still amongst the skinny bark-stripped pines.  
  
_She shouldn’t have seen that,_ Ikram thought. _She’s too young to see that._ The words were lost in his mouth, as he breathed hard.  
  
A black shadow followed her. Raptor claws closed in. Ikram threw the blood-drenched blade as he recognized the sharp beak of the vulture.  
  
It crashed, feet from the young girl. She screamed as its wings skimmed her. He jumped to it and crushed its neck under his heel. Vulture raptors had sharp talons, but their bones were as hollow as any songbird.  
  
Adelaide’s body shuddered and she began to sob. Real tears, this time.  
  
Ikram put his hands out, nervous. “Shh, Shh. <Please.>” He touched her shoulders tentatively. “<You are safe.>” His blood-covered hands left marks on her dress. He tried to wipe them, but no use. The girl would have blood on her. He knelt with his hands on his knees, wanting to comfort her, but unable. “You are safe. I swear on my life, <you are safe.>”  
  
She nodded. Her olive-green skin was mottled as she slowly hushed.  
  
With his cleanest hand, Ikram patted her head. He collected his knives, hanging them tentatively in his belt, then took Adelaide’s hand and led her down the badger path to Kren. A wound marred the side of his face. Djakka knelt beside him, gently pushing back Kren’s blood-stained crimson hair.  
  
“Get Minudz.” Under the demand, Djakka’s voice cracked.  
  
Ikram turned toward the cornfield, but Minudz already hustled toward them on thin limbs, laden with children. Milo clutched its back, his pudgy arms wrapped around the human’s neck. Its stone icon glowed between two younglings clutched to its chest.  
  
“Hurry,” Ikram signed.  
  
When Minudz reached them, Ikram peeled Milo off the human, plopped him down near Adelaide, then took Ymir and Guusnock from its arms. Minudz knelt next to Kren. “Water,” it signed.  
  
Ikram checked Kren’s belt and passed a canteen. With a damp cloth, Minudz wiped blood away from the wound. Kren flinched. Light leapt into the four jagged claw marks, and the bleeding slowed. Kren exhaled, muscles relaxing, and Ikram relaxed too.  
  
“Where are Feyak and Pirk?”  
  
Minudz gestured back to the cornfield. Ikram stepped in that direction, but his legs were anchored by Milo and Adelaide.  
  
Blixtek was right. Six was too many. He was getting badger blood all over the youngling’s wraps.  
  
“Is it dead?” Djakka said.  
  
Ikram grunted.  
  
“<Mr. Ikram killed the monster!>” Adelaide said. “<And the bird that wanted to eat me.>”  
  
“Shh,” Lente hushed Adelaide from behind Ikram. How had he gotten there? “The caravan is just over that hill. You need to be quiet, little one, unless you want to become a Black Spear. I sure don’t.”  
  
Adelaide quieted. Lente held Pirk on his hip, one hand on his bow, and made a silly grumpy face at Adelaide. She grinned and covered her mouth.  
  
“Where’s Feyak?” Ikram asked.  
  
“Here,” Blixtek said. The blue-eyed youngling was strapped to her back. She stood nearby, watching Minudz tend to Kren. “Is Kren going to live?”  
  
No one answered. Djakka didn’t even look up.  
  
Golden light glowed again, dripping from Minudz’ fingers into Kren’s skull. The human’s mouth was a thin line, but it nodded curtly at Djakka.  
  
Djakka ducked his head and draped Kren gently over his shoulders. “Lente, you’re up front. Blex, cover our trail. Do not let them follow us.”  
  
Blixtek nodded.  
  
“And if you do have to talk to one, just Kuud Punch them and run away!” Lente added. He held Pirk out to Minudz, who took the baby and strapped her to its chest.  
  
“No,” Djakka said.  
  
“Come on. They’d just think we’re Kuud Clan.”  
  
Djakka shifted Kren’s weight. “Go, Len.”  
  
Lente jogged forward. Djakka followed. Kren’s bloodied red hair swayed with each step.  
  
“Is Kren going to be okay?” Ikram signed.  
  
“I don’t know yet,” Minudz signed. “The brain might be swelling. There are some things I can’t fix.”  
  
_Something a healer can’t fix._ The idea sloshed in his head. A world without Kren.  
  
The party stopped when Adelaide started crying, exhausted. Milo was already fast asleep, strapped to Ikram’s back with a loose belt. Carefully, they lay the children on a spread canvas together. Djakka set Kren down in a soft patch, and Minudz peered into Kren’s eyes and ears and mouth. Kren watched with glazed green eyes.  
  
“Talk to us,” Minudz signed.  
  
Kren asked softly, “What am I supposed to say?”  
  
Djakka said, “Tell me how you could be so stupid. You could have died.”  
  
“So could you.”  
  
Minudz relaxed, sighing inaudibly. It sat back and stared at the sun for a moment, high overhead. Milo napped while cuddled with a sleep roll. Guusnock and Ymir clutched each other, fast asleep. Ikram listened as he changed the younglings. He left leather knobs in their mouths when he collected their soiled rags and went to the stream nearby to rinse and ring them dry. Blixtek followed.  
  
“Minudz seems relieved,” she said. Ikram only grunted. “Want me to clean your knives?”  
  
Ikram shrugged. Lazy knots loosened easily under her nimble fingers. One by one, she wiped the knives. Ikram watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her ropes of hair were tied back. The array of piercings on her ears gleamed in the afternoon sun. Reflections from the water dappled her face.  
  
_Was Blixtek being nice?_  
  
Her eyes flashed over his shoulder. “You have a visitor.”  
  
Ikram turned. Adelaide watched, partially hidden behind a tree. Blixtek retied the knives and left with soft footsteps. Ikram beckoned, and Adelaide walked forward to crouch next to him.  
  
“Aren’t you tired?” he asked. Her crying was why they’d stopped.  
  
“No.”  
  
He took a damp rag, cleaned now, and wiped blood from her hair and arms. “Talk to me.”  
  
“<I think orcs might be good.>”  
  
“<Not scared?>” Ikram grinned. His tusks showed.  
  
Adelaide shook her head. “<I’m going to be strong, like you. I’m going to kill big monsters. Then when Minudz takes me to the Wicked Citadel, I can protect them.>”  
  
Ikram gently pinched her cheek. She chomped toward his fingers with a wide grin. He pushed mostly-dry cloths into her hands. “Help carry.”  
  
“<I’m going to be a> good orc.” Adelaide stood, with the cloths bundled in her hands. Ikram gathered the rest and they returned to the group. _A good orc,_ Ikram thought. _I’d like to be a good orc too._  
  
They traveled a few more miles at a slow pace, before they stopped for the evening. Minudz and Ikram worked in tandem to change the younger twins, Guusnock and Ymir, by the same stream. The moon shone pale light on the halfie’s naked bellies, as they watched Minudz make silly faces in the warm summer night.  
  
Ikram washed the soiled cloths in the stream, collected over the day. He wrung each till mostly dry, then lay them over a low branch.  
  
“How long until Djakka makes us leave again?” Minudz signed. “For the pearl.”  
  
“After winter, probably.” Ikram thought about the buck-skin map, the jagged charred part labeled the edge of the world. “Leaving this late in the fall would put us deep in enemy territory for Slumber.”  
  
Minudz signed, “What if we lived in the den until then?”  
  
“What den?” he whispered. His hands wrung the next cloth, chasing away minnows with each dip into the stream. “The winter den?”  
  
“The place we stayed for winter.” Minudz nodded. “There would plenty of room for the eight of us.”  
  
“Maybe.” Ikram draped the cloth over the branch. “I don’t know if the chieftess would allow it.”  
  
“Wouldn’t she prefer me there, rather than nearer to the village?” Minudz signed. “Otherwise, we’d need to build a hut. Can we do that while taking care of the children?”  
  
“We could stay with my parents.”  
  
“They’d let us?”  
  
Ikram shrugged. “For a little while.”  
  
Minudz frowned.  
  
_You’re forgetting something,_ the moon whispered.  
  
Ikram looked up. “Yes, I know we’re going to fight.”  
  
_Something else._  
  
Ikram wrung the next cloth. His eyes drifted to Minudz. The reflection of the moon on the water shadowed its freckles. Its head. He’d forgot about its head, the violent possessor-kings.  
  
Minudz was still a vessel. Ikram’s mouth opened, then closed again. He didn’t want to bring it up. He looked back to the cloth in his hand and decided to wash it again. Some stains didn’t come out.  
  
When he glanced at Minudz again, it raised its eyebrows. A question.  
  
Ikram rolled words around on his tongue. Were the children in danger? What would happen if the kings possessed Minudz, and Ikram was out building, or hunting? “Would the kings…hurt them?”  
  
Minudz looked at the babes on the ground, with tiny hands reaching upward and kicking legs. The human clutched its hands together, its face crestfallen. Ikram moved to its side, grasped its shoulders.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said.  
  
“You’re right,” Minudz signed. Ikram could smell it forming tears. “The kings would kill them. All of them. For sport.”  
  
“We’ll stay with my sisters,” Ikram said. The Fallow household wasn’t much, but his sisters were vicious, awful creatures. Ula would revel in the chance to subdue a human. Egg and Anan would make it a game.  
  
“Can they stop me?” Minudz asked. “If I’m taken?”  
  
“Absolutely. They won’t let anything happen, even after we leave.” Ikram nodded, grinning. His tusks showed from his lips. “Blixtek will tell you: My sisters are the foulest, meanest orcs on the mountain. If anyone can protect our kids, they can.”  
  
Minudz wiped its eyes. Ikram held his arm around it. The quest would only be two years. The village could handle his children for two years. And when they returned with that rutting pearl, Djakka would finally leave him in peace.


	23. Expectations

A harrowing week of racing away from the Black Spears left the party too far south. Navigation back north required the utmost patience, between screaming toddlers and two of the children relentlessly teething. They gratefully accepted hospitality from neighbor clans and traded weapons when that wasn’t enough. Kren recovered slowly, eyes often fading to the distance as he walked, but he wasn’t dead. _Thank the Garden._ Minudz announced him out of danger.  
  
Six weeks later, the party finally arrived back at the base of the mountain in summer bloom. The range of pale gray rocks rose above the tree line. The moon stayed at their backs and spoke little. Ikram carried three of the growing half-orc babies in swaddles on his front and back, while Minudz carried Feyak.  
  
"Ymir pooped," Adelaide informed Ikram.  
  
Ikram had long since grown used to the perpetual stench of the infants as they fouled their underthings. He pulled Ymir, wriggling, out of the front right carrier by the scruff of his thrown-together clothes. "It wasn't his turn," Ikram grumbled. Their attempts to predict pooping cycles had so far failed. "Minudz?"  
  
Minudz passed Feyak to Ikram, then took the smelly Ymir. With a canteen of water, it cleaned Ymir and dressed him in a new cloth. Feyak settled onto Ikram’s chest.  
  
Djakka and Blixtek hiked ahead through morning fog, far enough away to avoid the confusion and Ikram's annoyance. Their leader had muttered regularly the past weeks, “Why are we doing this? They'll die anyway.”  
  
“Everybody dies,” Blixtek countered. “And Ikram’s our friend.”  
  
“Some friend.”  
  
Ikram snarled at Djakka's back as they continued their trek up the mountain. Milo stumbled and hurt his foot, so Lente carried the toddler on his shoulders.  
  
Lente, at least, said not a single unkind thing about the children. He skipped around, singing entertaining songs and helping with Kren’s bandages. He’d even braided Adelaide's hair after she'd refused to let Ikram shear it. Adelaide loved Lente best, with his quick wit, a handful of foreign words, and that mischievous grin.  
  
"Should we stop by South Stream?" Lente asked. "See Yekkan?"  
  
"Djakka is anxious to get back to our homestead," Kren muttered. His wound had long since scabbed. Now mostly healed, four jagged drags scarred the side of his head, narrowly missing his eye.  
  
"It wouldn't take long." Lente tucked his handmade string dolls into Kren’s collar. "I'm sure his sister had her litter by now."  
  
"Bad idea," Kren said. "Minudz doesn’t have clan scars."  
  
"But… more babies!" Lente said. He gestured excitedly, and Milo clutched Lente’s ears tight to hold on. "And you said you needed to talk to Yekkan."  
  
"Human's day is very soon," Kren said. "Young ones will be tempted by such easy prey as Minudz. Even if claimed."  
  
"South Stream has some vicious maids," Ikram muttered. But would they protect Minudz, or attack it?  
  
"More vicious than Ulanock Fallow?" Lente teased.  
  
"They pointed arrows at Djakka," Ikram said.  
  
"Oh. Right. I was there." Lente stared hard at the human. "We could paint it green!"  
  
"Are you very stupid?" Kren asked.  
  
Lente shrugged. "I'm cute and you know it."  
  
The human signed, “Don’t paint me.”  
  
"You all are talking too fast," Adelaide complained. Ikram glanced at her. The pink undertones of her olive-green skin wouldn’t make her a target, would it? She’d be safe, as long as she didn’t spout off about how she was _human on the inside_.  
  
"We'll send Lente ahead," Ikram said. "Go to South Stream, find Yekkan. I need to talk to him." Yekkan was one of the six orcs in the moon's arena. Ikram counted the younglings again. Six. Was their warparty delivering their own replacements?  
  
"Ikky. You've got that moon-mad look in your eyes again." Lente waved his hand in front of Ikram's line of sight. Minudz watched warily. "You need to sit down? Get some water? Soak some sun?"  
  
Ikram shook his head. He patted Feyak's tuft of hair absently, before his eyes found Lente. "What are you still doing here?" Ikram asked.  
  
Lente plopped Milo into Kren’s arms, adjusted his bow, turned, then sprinted toward South Stream.  
Kren looked to Ikram once Lente was out of sight. "Something's changed in you." The toddler, oscillating like a caught fish, waved at the wood where Lente disappeared.  
  
Ikram cast his eyes to the side. "You've heard them. I'm moon-mad."  
  
"The change started before winter." Kren risked a glance toward Minudz. "You never had a purpose before. Never showed interest in anything but sketching and throwing knives. And now, you're giving orders to Lente. You're giving orders to Djakka."  
  
Ikram wrinkled his nose. Kren wasn't about to start spouting off about kismet, was he? “I haven’t sketched since winter.”  
  
Kren plopped the squirming Milo down next to Adelaide. Milo immediately found a stick and started hitting her with it. “<Stop it!>” Adelaide demanded. Milo didn’t stop.  
  
"I think," Kren said, "there's something larger at work. Something sacred."  
  
Adelaide pinned Milo to the ground and rubbed dirt in his face. He screamed.  
  
Djakka turned around and yelled, "Shut that brat up or I'm making it into stew for Ma."  
  
Ikram plucked Adelaide up by the back of her tunic, suspending the girl over the ground and walking forward. Minudz, with Ymir in his sling, brushed Milo off, healed his little scrape, and took his hand.  
  
Kren tapped his chin. "In your dream, with the giant sword and the moon, we were there too?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Who, exactly?"  
  
"Six. Me. You. Djakka, Blex, Lente, and Yekkan."  
  
"That's why you need to speak with the old bowman," Kren assumed. "He has to come with us. Per the prophecy."  
  
"It was a dream, not a prophecy."  
  
"Fine. The dream. But nowhere in this dream did I see your pet human."  
  
Ikram frowned. "What?"  
  
"Minudz has no part in our quest," Kren said. Minudz and the toddler trailed behind Kren and Ikram, due to shorter legs. Milo’s foot didn’t seem to hurt much anymore. "It runs too slow. Sleeps too long. It will only slow us down."  
  
"It heals—"  
  
"We cannot know if magic will work past the edge of the world. Things are…different there. There are monsters we can only dream of. Wyrms and hybrids. Dragaan."  
  
"But—"  
  
"It could die," Kren said. "Die forever. We could all die, and your children would be unclaimed."  
  
Ikram fell silent. Minudz' and Milo's steps were slow behind them, rustling through the summer grasses. On Ikram's back, Guusnock babbled and kicked its skinny legs.  
  
"Prophecies are delicate things," Kren said. "It is dangerous to mix extra elements into a—into—” Kren touched the scar on his head, blinked slowly, and moved on. “I suspect that your dream specifically avoided bringing, say, a shaman."  
  
"I'm not leaving Minudz," Ikram whispered.  
  
"You are a warrior. You knew that you would be expected to leave your family."  
  
"This is different," Ikram said. "I wanted to leave them."  
  
"Want means nothing. You still have your duty to the tribe, to the chieftess, and to Djakka. And according to him, a duty to all our kind. Every orc in the world."  
  
"But I want Minudz to come with me."  
  
"That is selfish. Who will look after the babies? And Milo and Adelaide?"  
  
“My sisters,” Ikram said.  
  
“Your sisters… Ikram, these kids are half human. They’re going to need human guidance too.”  
  
“What about Tungsk’s family? The Shortslayers?”  
  
Kren shook his head. “You’re grasping at the smallest branches. We have to leave, and Minudz has to stay.”  
  
Adelaide, walking mostly on her own with Ikram's hand still held tight to her tunic, tugged on Ikram's arm. "You're leaving us?"  
  
Ikram's eyes widened as he soaked in the girl's pout. She was sweet now, all memory of her recent battle with Milo melted like morning frost under the rising sun. "I have to." Ikram looked at Kren. "I'm a warrior."  
  
"Are you warrior too, Mr. Kren?"  
  
"Yes, little Adelaide."  
  
The child twisted suddenly and escaped Ikram's grasp. Her legs bounded, making quick work of the nearby underbrush, weaving between trees at a full sprint.  
  
"Adelaide!" Ikram shouted.  
  
One of the babies started to cry at the noise. Ahead, Djakka and Blixtek turned.  
  
Adelaide was now little more than a pastel blur between the trees. Was she headed toward South Stream? Would one of the summer monsters find her? Dire boars roamed the mountainside. Trap worms laid in meadows, ready to snap up unsuspecting creatures. Adelaide had seen the dangerous beasts; she’d nearly been eaten by a vulture not two months ago. She should know better than to run off. She should know better.  
  
Blixtek came loping by, her long legs stretching over the underbrush expertly as she chased after the escaping child.  
  
Djakka walked slowly toward Ikram and Kren, eyes squinted. His dark hair was tucked behind his ears, and new scruff clung to his jawline. He watched as Blixtek disappeared entirely after the girl.  
  
"Maybe we'll get lucky," Djakka commented, "and that halfie will get eaten before Blex catches her."  
  
Ikram barely felt his muscles tense before he threw his clenched fist into Djakka's face. His knuckles hit full force. Djakka reeled. Both babies cried as Ikram shook off his hand.  
  
Djakka reared, squaring his shoulders and seeming a foot taller. "How dare you!" His arm flew up.  
  
Kren stepped between them and took the blow to his arm. His sword was still sheathed.  
  
Ikram spat. "Never threaten one of my kids again."  
  
"Never—? Kren could have died because of your kids, because we had to escort them. You’ve risked everyone’s lives with them. You’ve risked the future of our world for your damned human and these bastards."  
  
"It’s just a pearl!" Ikram said. "It’s some stupid rock the moon spat out. How is that supposed to save the world?"  
  
"I am leading us to our destiny."  
  
"You are a spoiled child. My babies shit themselves, and still behave better than you."  
  
Djakka's eyes glinted. "You—"  
  
Kren asked, "Do you have a death wish, Ikram?"  
  
"You—" Djakka snapped. "You are playing house. You want to be a den mother? A thresher? You and your kids will plow half-barren fields until the other peoples of this world come to slaughter us? Do you want to be cattle?"  
  
Ikram retorted, "We’re not cows. We fight."  
  
Kren hissed, "Shut your rut-hole, Ikram."  
  
Djakka roared into the air, a bellow from the pits of despair that lived in his lungs. "Get it through your skull, you liverless swine, I’m fighting for the survival of our species. This, these mountains, the _Afterlands_ , is all we are afforded on this planet." His fingers threaded through his hair, then pointed to the babes on Ikram’s chest. "Don't you want better for these children? For Feyak, Pirk, Ymir, and Guusnock? For Milo? For Adelaide?"  
  
Ikram hadn't realized Djakka knew their names.  
  
Something burned in his leader's dark eyes, a molten certainty, living fire. Djakka _believed_. And he commanded, "Kren. Move."  
  
Kren stepped aside. Nothing between Ikram and Djakka's fists, nothing to protect Feyak and Pirk anymore.  
  
Djakka unclenched his fist and placed his large hand on Ikram’s shoulder. "If we do nothing, this generation will not survive. Orcs will dwindle. We will fall. I cannot put six lives over the future of our world. I cannot even put our clan over the future of our world. I am your friend, Ikram, but you must decide if I am your leader."  
  
Ikram inclined his head. "You are my leader. You have always been my leader."  
  
Djakka turned. "You'll have three days to make preparations for them while we gather supplies. We'll leave before they start evening fires, third day, so that our first rest is within this mountain's territory."  
  
Three days? Ikram had thought they’d have the winter.  
  
"Will the Chieftess let us leave so soon?" Kren asked.  
  
Djakka pointedly resumed his hike without an answer.  
  
Blixtek returned some minutes later, with Adelaide tucked to her hip. "Where'd Djakka go?" she asked. "What did you all do?"  
  
Kren snorted and followed Djakka's trail, walking faster. Ikram shrugged and ignored her. Blixtek looked at Minudz as Adelaide squirmed to be let down.  
  
The human's mouth opened, then closed. It signed, "They had an argument about the children, and the journey."  
  
"Uh-huh," Blixtek said. "I never thought I'd wish that you could talk."  
  
Minudz crossed its fist at her.  
  
Blixtek chuckled briefly, readjusted Adelaide, and continued.


End file.
